An Expansive Subjecthood in Eighteenth-Century British North America: The Life and Perspectives of Sir Guy Carleton
By Lacey Hunter
Honors Thesis History Department University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
March 27, 2018
Advised by: Dr. Wayne E. Lee Dr. Kathleen DuVal Contents
Introduction ------2
Chapter 1: Carleton in an Emerging Empire, 1740s – 1760s ------9
Chapter 2: Governor of Quebec and Defender of Empire, 1770s ------29
Chapter 3: Carleton’s Last Effort for Empire, 1780 – 83 ------50
Conclusion ------75
Bibliography ------80
List of Maps
Map 1: Carleton Point ------2
Map 2: Province of Quebec and the northern thirteen colonies ------36
1 Introduction
A Small Settlement from a Big Legacy
Nestled within the rocky landscape behind a small, unassuming, sandy beach on the
Bahamian island of Abaco sits a rectangular memorial plaque. In 1983, Dr. Steve Dodge, a
history professor and nautical
researcher, commissioned its
creation and placement to
commemorate the bicentennial
of the attempted loyalist
settlement on that island in
1783. The plaque conveys the
area’s name as “Carleton
Point” in honor of Sir Guy
Carleton, the British
Commander-in-Chief during
the British evacuation at the
conclusion of the American
War for Independence. On the
land behind that point, a group
of loyalist refugees had come
to settle the island, hoping it
would become the “hub of a Map 1: Carleton Point commemorated at the Bicentennial Ceremony in 1983. From Steve Dodge, Abaco: The History of an Out Island and its Cays (Florida: White Sound Press, 2005).
2 new prosperous British Empire in Abaco.”1 As loyal British subjects, these settlers fled the newly independent United States where they were unsafe and unwelcome, leaving behind most of their property and possessions in search of a safe place to live. Along with the point of land upon which they landed, they called their settlement Carleton and the adjacent creek Carleton
Creek. As Commander-in-Chief at the end of a long war, Sir Guy Carleton had overseen their safe evacuation out of the United States to another part of the empire.
The loyalist settlement of Carleton was not successful, as the settlers struggled to grow enough food to sustain their colony and commerce languished. The rocky terrain of the island made it nearly impossible to grow crops.2 Because they had expected to transplant the commerce of New York, Boston, Virginia, and other prosperous previously British economic centers to the islands, they constructed ships for trade, but were unable, however, to fill them with crops and other goods. In October of 1783, John Harding, the British official that accompanied the settlers, wrote to Sir Guy Carleton himself asking for “Six Months Provisions,” shoes, some nails, and medicine, “as the People are Landed very sickly from the Ships.”3 Within a few months, two-thirds of the settlers abandoned Carleton and founded other towns nearby, such as Marsh Harbor, in the hopes of better success.4 After experiencing chaos and uncertainty from the American War and fleeing the mainland, as well as a long journey to the island, the hardships at Abaco must have been arduous to bear. In a few years time, the settlement at
Carleton ceased to exist.
1 Steve Dodge, Abaco: The History of an Out Island and its Cays (Florida: White Sound Press, 2005); email 2 Sandra Riley, Homeward Bound: A Story of the Bahama Islands to 1850 with a Definitive Study of Abaco in the American Loyalist Plantation Period (Miami, FL: Island Research, 1983), 143. 3 John Harding to Guy Carleton, October 1, 1783, British Headquarters Papers #9266 in Riley, Homeward Bound, 143-4. 4 Dodge, Abaco: The History of an Out Island; email correspondence with Dr. Dodge.
3 Although the Carleton settlement did not come to fruition, its history and the 1983 commemoration speaks to the legacy of Sir Guy Carleton as one of the dozens of places where loyalists fled in the wake of the American Revolution. Carleton’s legacy of aiding loyalists is most strongly connected to the black loyalist population—out of the 127 refugees on the first ship from New York City to Abaco, 66 of them were black men and women.5 During the course of the Anglo-American conflict, thousands of enslaved peoples had fled their masters, many of whom took refuge with the British. While in charge of protecting the loyalist population gathered in New York City, Carleton interpreted the Treaty of Paris in a way that allowed him to uphold British law that protected its subjects, regardless of their race. The settlers at Abaco named their town after the man to whom they likely felt especially grateful, and Carleton’s legacy exists in other places that bear his name, such as the island called Carleton’s Prize in the middle of Lake Champlain. More importantly, however, is his legacy that lived on through the men and women who fled to other parts of the British Empire due to his command.
Historiography
Sir Guy Carleton’s name shows up in a multitude of works within the fields of the eighteenth-century British Empire, the American Revolution, Canadian history, African and
African American diaspora history, Native American history, and military history. There are only four comprehensive biographies, however, on Carleton’s life.6 Two of them predominately focus on his defense of Quebec in 1775-76: William Charles Henry Wood’s The Father of
5 Riley, Homeward Bound, 142. 6 Arthur Granville Bradley, Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966). It was originally published in 1907; William Charles Henry Wood, The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton (Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1920); Paul R. Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1980); Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester (London: Associated University Press, 2000).
4 British Canada, the twelfth volume of “The Chronicles of Canada,” and Paul R. Reynolds’ Guy
Carleton, A Biography.
While Canadian historians know him as the “Father of British Canada” thanks to Wood’s narrative, Carleton’s most prevalent legacy among American, British, and British Imperial historians was his facilitation of evacuating loyalist ex-slaves out of New York City and to safe parts of the empire, contrary to the intentions of the 1783 Treaty of Paris.7 The Treaty of Paris decisively ended the war between the British Empire and thirteen of its North American colonies along the eastern seaboard from Georgia to New Hampshire. Signed by representatives from
Britain and the rebel colonies in 1783, the treaty recognized the thirteen colonies’ independence from the British Empire. Most historians who discuss Carleton do so only briefly and superficially, usually choosing only to outline his actions in regards to evacuating thousands of black loyalists out of New York City at the end of the American Revolution.8 Other historians, such as Ellen Wilson, Allen Gilbert, and Simon Schama, devote more attention to Carleton, but they focus only on his actions in the 1780s. Although Carleton is a common figure in many fields of historical scholarship, historians have not made connections between his earlier life experiences and his actions regarding British subjects at the conclusion of the American War for
Independence. The actions he took over the course of his life in the British military and as a public official are essential in understanding his actions in 1782 and 1783. Simply put, one cannot understand Carleton the Commander-in-Chief without understanding him as a person.
7 Wood, The Father of British Canada; Mark R. Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: Americas War for Liberation in Canada, 1774-1776, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2013). Anderson focuses on Carleton’s time as governor of Quebec and his overall role in Canada. 8 Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and the Global Quest for Liberty (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2006); Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knope, 2011); Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Henry Weincek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003); Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1782 (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008).
5 Ellen Wilson’s The Loyal Blacks is one of the first histories of black loyalists during the
American Revolution and still holds great merit. She emphasizes that Carleton “acted off his own bat, for he had received no instructions from home,” but offers a simplistic explanation of
Carleton’s reasons for evacuating the black refugees: he wanted to uphold honor.9 Whether she meant his honor, that of the empire, or both, is unclear. Wilson leaves unanswered where his strong sense of honor came from, why he felt it, and to whom or to what specifically he felt he owed it.10
In Black Patriots and Loyalists, Alan Gilbert extensively discusses Carleton’s connection to black loyalists within British areas of control. Like Wilson, Gilbert argues that Carleton and other British officials wanted to protect the black men and women behind their lines in order to show them the honor they were promised and deserved. Gilbert attests to Carleton’s brilliant
“stratagem” in defending his interpretation of the Treaty of Paris by focusing on the only ten records that exist of black men and women who had to go to trial for their freedom.11 These ten, according to Gilbert, acted as a cover for thousands who fled without a court process.12 Gilbert’s work paints Carleton as fervently defiant of any ideas of leaving black British subjects in the ex- colonies, but like Wilson, does not explain why.
Simon Schama describes Carleton through the lens of his inherited legacy of ensuring a
British America. Painting Carleton as an “incurable romantic” for the British Empire, Schama argues that his life’s mission was to safeguard British stakes and imperial influence in America.13
Carleton inherited this mission, Schama suggests, from his friend and role model James Wolfe
9 Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), 55. 10 Wilson, The Loyal Blacks, 55. 11 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 191. 12 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 191. 13 Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London: BBC Books, 2005), 130.
6 during the Seven Years’ War, whom Carleton saw “die a hero’s death so that British America might live.”14 After the disappointing defeat in the American War, Schama believes Carleton defended black refugees against the demands of General Washington and other Americans in order to vindicate “his woeful, defeated kingdom… and rescue [it] from the sordid debacle a shred of decency and honour.”15 Schama’s opinions about Carleton’s attachment to the empire are romantic and obscure more than they illuminate about Carleton’s decision-making. In fact,
Carleton’s life before the 1780s shaped his specific view of empire, subjects, and his end-of-war decisions.
A New Perspective
This thesis implements original research on the course of Carleton’s life to examine how his personal background as a loyal British subject, army officer, and royal governor, as well as contemporary ideological movements influenced his actions to protect ex-enslaved subjects in
1783. Because Carleton requested that his private papers be burned upon his death, this paper uses primary documents from official government correspondence written to and from Carleton, as well as contemporary correspondence, treatises, and other works. This analysis frames
Carleton’s evacuation of ex-slaves within the context of his life, not as a sudden act of humanity or desperate patriotism. His ideological roots and personal experiences that informed his decision reveal that his actions were neither a passive continuity of previous British generals’ wartime policies, nor out of a vague sense of horror or anger at Britain’s defeat.
Throughout the course of his life, Carleton made decisions and took actions to smoothly bring new subjects into the empire because he believed that imperial control and the king’s
14 Schama, Rough Crossings, 130. 15 Schama, Rough Crossings, 146.
7 protection was in everyone’s best interest. Also essential to the growing empire were content and loyal subjects. The era’s tendency of ethnocentricity coincided with the reality of an increasingly heterogeneous empire, and Carleton’s professionalizing approach to his responsibilities in both the military and public office affirmed Britain’s increasingly legally extensive notions of subjecthood in the late eighteenth century. Although notions of subjecthood were expanding, the empire was still exclusionary, meaning that not all subjects received the same rights.16 This paper examines Carleton’s life as a dedicated servant of the British Empire and explores his repeated efforts to incorporate new subjects, such as French Canadians, members of Indian nations, and black ex-slaves, into the imperial system. Ultimately, this thesis analyzes key decisions in his life that were all connected by his mental framework of an expansive subjecthood, as well as the context of the time, in order to determine why he decided to evacuate thousands of formerly enslaved black loyalists at the end of the American
Revolution. It additionally suggests that he believed he did not violate the peace treaty. Indeed,
Carleton wanted to maintain British national honor, but it is important to highlight that his upbringing and lifelong influence of the imperial system led him to uphold both lofty ideas of honor and on-the-ground promises of freedom. He felt a duty to all British subjects, and from his perspective, black runaways were another group of His Majesty’s loyal subjects that deserved protection. Carleton believed applying the law to all loyal British subjects, of whatever race or ethnicity, would ensure a prosperous empire.
16 Jack P. Greene, “Introduction: Empire and Liberty” in Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600- 1900, ed. Jack P. Greene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1-24.
8 Chapter 1: Carleton in an Emerging Empire, 1740s-1760s
Introduction
Sir Guy Carleton met James Wolfe, three years his junior, shortly after entering the British military. Carleton entered the system as an ensign at the age of seventeen, while Wolfe was born into a military family, received an elite education, and enlisted as a second lieutenant in his father’s regiment in 1741 when he was fourteen years old.17 The friendship between Carleton and Wolfe began as early as 1747, when Wolfe first mentioned Carleton in a letter to a lady friend.18 Unlike Carleton, Wolfe spent most of the years of the War of Austrian Succession fighting in various campaigns. At the war’s conclusion, Wolfe held the rank of major of the 20th
Regiment of Foot, while Carleton was still a lieutenant.19
Carleton likely felt discouraged by the progress of his friend in comparison to his own and may even have perceived the inherent inequalities of the system that supplied the best experiences to subjects with money and influential connections. Unbeknownst to him, however, he too was a privileged subject that would be able to use the systems set in place to experience success in the British Empire. Carleton’s efforts to advance his military career and his experiences in both the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War reflect the principles of patronage that dominated the British military, as well as exposed him to the changing nature of Britain during the mid-eighteenth century. He served in the military during a period of increasing regulation and emerging professionalization, which happened alongside
Britain’s transformation to empire. The growth of Britain’s empire catalyzed changing notions of subjecthood from the 1740s to 1760s, during which Carleton himself worked to allow
17 Ira D. Gruber, Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 131. 18 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 18. 19 Gruber, Books and the British Army, 132.
9 flexibility and accommodation for the inclusion of new subjects—he saw this as the best way to ensure a functional and prosperous empire. Although Britain was marked by ethnocentrism,
Carleton’s background in the increasingly professional military, as well as the emerging literature focused on human development, liberty, and empathy led him to make decisions that reflected ideas of extensive subjecthood.
Patronage
Guy Carleton (Sir Guy after 1776 and Lord Dorchester after 1786) was born into a land-owning family in Strabane, Ireland in 1724. Although his ancestors could trace themselves back to the
Conquest of 1066, his parents owned only a modest amount of land by Irish standards. They could provide for their eleven children, but were not members of the aristocratic class. Fitting the family’s modest social and economic status, Carleton received a rudimentary childhood education.20 When he was fourteen years old, his father died, and a year later his mother remarried the Reverend Thomas Skelton, who became young Carleton’s first patron. Skelton was well educated and took it upon himself to continue the Carleton boys’ basic education. The details of the knowledge that Skelton passed onto Carleton are unknown, but it is likely that his teachings included religious instruction.21
Carleton did not follow his stepfather in joining the Anglican ministry, nor is there evidence that he held strong religious conviction. Instead, he followed the careers of his male ancestors since the reign of Charles I and entered the British army.22 Carleton and two of his brothers joined the army through the patronage of the Right Honorable William Conolly, a
20 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 17. 21 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 18. 22 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 17-18.
10 member of the Irish Parliament and landed-gentry, as well as a friend of their late father.23 It was
1742 and Carleton was seventeen.
In eighteenth-century Britain, young men wishing to enter the military system needed three things to align in their favor: one, there needed to be a vacancy within a regiment due to the death of a member or sale of their commission; two, they required the sponsorship of an influential patron; and three, they needed money in order to purchase the commission. The patron would use their place in politics and society to vouch for the abilities and character of their client, and they might even help with the funding required to purchase the commission.
Apart from supplying funding, a patron could function on a more basic level as a sort of mentor or teacher, such as Reverend Skelton was for Carleton. The military was a desirable route for young, motivated men because “it provided an entry into circles of power and patronage centered on the government and court.”24 Nonetheless, in the eighteenth-century British army, officers were often already from the landed, well-connected class with family names to live up to.25
Within these spheres of power, young military personnel needed to demonstrate merit, but also attain further patronage in order to rise in the ranks.
When Carleton’s regiment, the 25th Regiment of Foot, joined other British forces fighting in the War of Austrian Succession, he was still a young lieutenant eager to advance his career.26
His regiment, however, did not see action until 1747, seven years into the war and only a year before hostilities would stop. At this point in time, Carleton became an aide-de-camp to Prince
William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and the king’s third son. Despite serving the King’s
23 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 18. 24 Erich Weidenhammer, “Patronage and Enlightened Medicine in the Eighteenth-century British Military: The Rise and Fall of Dr John Pringle, 1707-1782,” Social History of Medicine 29 (2016), 21-43. 25 Ian Roy, “The Profession of Arms,” in The Professions in Early Modern England, ed. Wilfrid Prest (Kent: Croom Helm Ltd, 1987), 181-219. 26 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 18. The War of Austrian Succession lasted from December 1740 to October 1748 and included many of the European powers over the question of Maria Theresa’s succession of the Habsburg throne.
11 son, Carleton was not promoted to a more prestigious regiment until 1751. Although promoted to the First Foot Guards, Carleton was still a lieutenant while many of his peers, such as Wolfe, had risen to higher ranks.27 The differences of military rank between Sir Guy Carleton and
Wolfe at the end of the War of Austrian Succession reveals the importance of status at birth and luck in the eighteenth-century British military. From an early age, Carleton experienced the hierarchical nature of the British system, but would use its laws and structures to advance his place in society.
Professionalism
Britain’s participation in the bloody wars of eighteenth-century Europe and its colonies helped spur the professionalization of soldiers and sailors.28 The nature of these imperial wars created the need for full-time officers, typically junior officers, in order to implement a growing presence and control in newly acquired colonial territories.29 Historian D.J.B. Trim delineates seven characteristics of the early modern European profession of arms: “a discrete occupational identity; formal hierarchy; performance; a formal pay system; a distinct expertise and means of education therein; efficiency in execution of expertise; and a distinctive self- conceptualization.”30 Carleton would have experienced all seven of Trim’s military characteristics in the mid-eighteenth century. His lifelong dedication to the military, fighting in wars on both European and North American soil, reflected the crystallization of his sense of professional identity in the eighteenth century.
One of these changes that emerged within the self-conceptualization of professional
27 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 19. 28 Roy, “The Profession of Arms,” 181-219. 29 Roy, “The Profession of Arms,” 181-219. 30 D.J.B Trim, “Introduction,” in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, ed. D.J.B Trim (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1-35.
12 soldiers in the eighteenth century was their dependency on the Crown. In previous centuries, martial aristocrats derived their honor from their autonomy and freedom of action, including freedom from constraint by the monarchy. By Carleton’s era, status as a military officer had come to imply a strict ‘service’-oriented relationship to the Crown. Thus, when Carleton entered the military as a young man, he altered his status from a civilian British subject to that of a servant of the king and of the empire as a whole. Not only was Carleton bound to follow the authority of the laws passed by Parliament and rulings of the courts like all subjects, but he was also obliged to defend the country, its interests in Europe, and its growing empire.31
An Anglican clergyman named Thomas Gisborne argued that the professional naval and military man should be a protector of the Crown, a life-long learner both on the battlefield and through military theory education, and a servant of the public good. In 1797, he synthesized the responsibilities of public figures within the British national and imperial system in An Enquiry into the Duties of Men in the Higher and Middle Classes of Society.32 While Gisborne published this popular work in 1797, it was likely a compilation of ideas that had been shaped and practiced throughout the course of the eighteenth century. Gisborne only had experience in the clergy, but he claimed to have consulted men in other professions in order to accurately convey various roles and standards.33 It was necessary for an eighteenth-century British officer to recognize his reliance on and his representation of the Crown in order to perform his duties with success and honor.
Carleton exhibited his sense of connection to the Crown and a heightened sense of
31 See discussion in Wayne E. Lee, Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865, (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2011), 76-80. 32 Gareth Atkins, “Religion, politics, and patronage in the late Hanoverian navy, c.1780 - c.1820,” Historical Research 88 (May 2015), 272-290. 33 Thomas Gisborne, An enquiry into the duties of men in the higher and middle classes of society in Great Britain: resulting from their perspective stations, professions, and employments, (London: B. and J. White, 1797), vi.
13 military ethics during the siege of Quebec in the Seven Years’ War.34 In the summer of 1759,
Wolfe, Carleton’s old friend, had assigned him to capture a French supply depot at Pointe-aux-
Trembles that allegedly held papers detailing French battle plans.35 The raid turned out to be fruitless, with Carleton and his comrades finding neither a cache of supplies nor the papers. Near the shore at Pointe-aux-Trembles was a group of makeshift houses and tents inhabited by French
Canadians who had evacuated Quebec during the siege.36 Carleton saw that there were men, women, and children without food and supplies living in the sketchy accommodations.
Carleton’s six hundred soldiers were tired and lacked enthusiasm after the unrewarding raid, but he ordered them to ferry the starving people to the British camp at Lévis.37 At the camp,
Carleton and his men fed and supplied their French Canadian guests. Wolfe applauded
Carleton’s noble action, one that perfectly accorded with emergent norms of ethical conduct toward non-combatants.38 Carleton’s actions not only made himself, but the Empire as a whole, look good. This deed revealed his sense of morality towards people in need, as well as his heightened understanding that his actions should benefit the overall good of the Empire. It would turn out, then unbeknownst to Carleton, that these foreigners would be considered subjects of the British Empire by 1763.
Another aspect of the increasing sense of professionalism in the British military was the importance of a corps of officers who were “students of warfare.”39 Samuel Bever coined this
34 The war lasted from 1756 to 1763 and was fought on many continents. It included the powerhouses of Europe that formed two enemy coalitions led by Britain and France. On the North American front, it was more commonly known as the French and Indian War, and conflict on that front began in 1754. 35 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 5. 36 The French Canadians were also known as Québécois, but I will typically use the term French Canadian in this paper. 37 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 5-6. 38 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 6. For discussion on contemporary codes regarding non-combatants, see Lee Barbarians and Brothers and Barbara Donagan, “Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War,” Past & Present 118 (1988), 65-95. 39 Samuel Bever, The Cadet: A Military Treatise, (London: W. Johnston in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1756), 17.
14 term in his book written for officers, The Cadet, in 1756. Bever’s phrase embodied the increasing necessity that British officer corps be well studied in military history, the art of war, engineering and artillery, and foreign languages.40 Bever also emphasized that officers should
“esteem it as a Point of Honour to observe exactly the Military Laws and Articles of War,” or the proper customs for conducting warfare.41 As an officer striving to move up in the ranks of the army, Carleton would have been familiar with all of the topics that Bever highlights. Among both ancient and contemporary military works, Bever’s work was a part of the emerging canon of literature that eighteenth-century officers were expected to study.
Many British officers received an education at a university, college, or military academy and had prior knowledge of foreign language, mathematics, and drawing; but by the close of the
War of Austrian Succession, the British realized that their officers needed to have a background in the military procedures and tactics of the mainland.42 The War of Austrian Succession revealed the British army’s need for tactics already being used by continental European armies.
In order to keep up with the rapidly improving enemy forces, British officers turned to the works of continental thinkers by the 1750s.43 Carleton was present at multiple unsuccessful British campaigns in the Austrian War of Succession. He also spent time around some of the highest- ranking officers as the aide-de-camp of Prince William Augustus, King George II’s son.44 It is possible that Carleton heard discussion about the need for British armed forces to evolve to fit the newest theories and methods of war. The British army’s compulsion to adapt continental wartime tactics and strategies fueled the study of both classic and contemporary military literature, overall bolstering the establishment of the profession of the arms.
40 Gruber, Books and the British Army, 25. 41 Bever, The Cadet, 150. See further discussion on the laws of war in Chapter 3. 42 Gruber, Books and the British Army, 19. 43 Gruber, Books and the British Army, 14. 44 Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 19.
15 While neither educated at a university nor trained in an academy, Carleton’s status as a
“student of warfare” was solidified by an unfortunate event: the death of his friend and benefactor James Wolfe. On the North American front of the Seven Years’ War, Wolfe held the rank of Brigadier General and requested that Carleton be of service for the planned siege of
Louisbourg, thereby becoming Carleton’s patron. Unfortunately, Carleton’s loyal friend was killed leading a bayonet charge in the Battle of Quebec, also called the Battle of the Plains of
Abraham, in September of 1759.45 Before the battle, Wolfe had written in his will to leave one thousand pounds and “all [his] books and papers, both here and in England” to Carleton.46
Wolfe would not have entrusted his large collection of books and papers to someone who would not have appreciated them. Wolfe’s bequest suggests that Carleton was working towards becoming a well-studied military man that met the new standards of professionalism.
Although there is no catalog of Wolfe’s library, it is possible to get a glimpse of what he owned and passed down to Carleton by gleaning letters he wrote to friends recommending specific books and subject matters. While it was normal for eighteenth-century probate records to include itemized lists of the deceased’s possessions, Carleton’s does not.47 Neither is
Carleton’s last will and testament helpful regarding any specific items he possessed at the time of his death. Wolfe owned, however, and presumably passed down to Carleton, works by some of the most popular authors of the time that officers were reading to learn about conducting war:
Julius Caesar, Flavinus Vegetius Renatus, and Thucydides.48 Wolfe owned a larger selection of more contemporary works, many of them by continental authors who wrote on the armies of
45 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 27. 46 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 27. 47 “Right Honorable Guy Carleton died Possessed of,” Bank of England Wills Extracts, 1717-1845, Findmypast.co.uk. 48 “Will of The Right Honorable Sir Guy Carleton Lord Dorchester,” 19 January 1809, PROB 11/1491/161, The National Archives, London, United Kingdom. Carleton did have children to whom he would have passed his belongings.
16 mainland Europe. Some of these were Lancelot Turpin de Crissé's Essai Sur l' Art de la Guerre,
L’Attaque et la Dèfense des Places by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and Les Memoires by
Louis Goulon.49 It is likely that Carleton read the books bequeathed to him by his patron and close friend, crystalizing his acceptance of his role as a professional officer.
Subjecthood in the Empire
In the years leading up to the Seven Years’ War, the British had contact with people and places all over the globe, but the empire was still something of an ad hoc accumulation of territories. It consisted of Ireland; Scotland; a stretch of colonies on the North American eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to Newfoundland; a handful of Caribbean Islands; and some company territories in India. In the years before the Seven Years’ War, there is no doubt that the British government and military machine had experience conquering and assimilating groups of non-
British peoples into the imperial system, but their conquests outside of the British Isles were limited in scope and influence. Britain had control over most of Ireland since the twelfth century and had engaged in intermittent warfare with the Scottish since the thirteenth century. The
English viewed the Irish and Scottish (particularly the Highland Scots) as culturally inferior, a sentiment that sparked military, social, religious, and administrative campaigns in order to
Anglicize these northern subjects. Anglicization efforts meant interaction and contact, which contributed to the emergence of an overarching British identity.50 Many eighteenth-century
Britons did not view the Irish, nor the Americans, as culturally British, but they did see them as
49 “Wolfe to Thomas Townshend, 10 July 1756,” ed. Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1909), 295-296. 50 Frank O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688-1832 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) 108.
17 subjects with obligations to the Crown.51
Prior to Britain’s immense territorial acquisitions after the Seven Years’ War, British law and custom had defined the parameters of subjecthood to a basic extent. Before the transformation of imperial activity in the eighteenth century, Britons had little reason to consider the nature of subjecthood beyond the people of the British Isles and people of British birth living or working abroad. The court case Calvin v. Smith in 1608, more commonly called Calvin’s
Case, was the first time an English court articulated that the status of a subject was vested at birth and determined by their place of birth.52 The case ruled that anyone born in English territory after 1603 had the right “to enjoy the benefits of English law as subjects of the King.”53 The case was brought forward regarding a Scottish child. The question of Scottish subjecthood status was especially pertinent in the early seventeenth century because James IV of Scotland had inherited in the throne of England as King James I in 1603.54
Because James became the king of both England and Scotland, people born in either place owed him allegiance, thus they were theoretically guaranteed legal protection, ability to sue in court, and “government due by the law of nature,” according to Sir Edward Coke, Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, at the time of the case.55 Coke’s opinion of the case became the authoritative interpretation.56 In essence, it meant that all people born into the King’s territories
51 P.J. Marshall, “A nation Defined by Empire, 1755-1776” in Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer (London: Routledge, 1995) 208-222. 52 Poly J. Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin's Case (1608),” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 9 (Winter 1997), 73-146. Calvin’s Case is also called the Case of the Postnati. 53 Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship,” 73-146. 54 Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship,” 73-146. 55 Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship,” 73-146; Jack P. Greene, “Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution,” in The Oxford History of British Empire, Vol. II, ed. P.J. Marshall, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 208-230. 56 Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 84.
18 were subjects, “regardless of religion, race, or ancestry.”57 Scots born prior to James I’s ascension to the throne were not considered subjects of England because they were born under a ruler with no connection to the English Crown. According to historian Hannah Weiss Muller, the case also recognized that British subjects could live under different rules of law but share allegiance to the same monarch.58 Sir Edward Coke’s report helped clarify the ramifications of this case in regards to the rights of the King’s subjects, and who, within the narrow scope of the
British Isles, was a subject. The ruling of the case provoked some of the most prominent legal thinkers of the time to claim that protection of English law was theoretically included with the status of subjecthood. 59 In theory, there were equal benefits and obligations for all subjects.
Calvin’s Case, however, did not address the question of subjecthood for individuals outside of Scotland who had not been born in the King’s dominion, but whose land became
British territory after annexation. Because Calvin’s Case and later cases that dealt with subjecthood in the empire, like Craw v. Ramsey and Fabrigas v. Mostyn, did not address this issue, when the British Empire expanded, the status of inhabitants of those newly acquired lands would be left uncertain and highly debatable.60 British officials, such as Carleton, and the inhabitants living within newly British territory would influence and direct policy regarding their subjecthood.
The Seven Years’ War and New Territories (1756-1775)
The Seven Years’ War resulted in the incorporation of many more groups of non-British peoples
57 Hannah Weiss Muller, “Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire,” Journal of British Studies 53 (January 2014), 29-58. 58 Muller, Bonds of Belonging, 32. 59 Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship,” 73-146. 60 Muller, Bonds of Belonging, 14. According to Muller, Craw v. Ramsey (1681) and Fabrigas v. Mostyn (1773) ruled that allegiance was a mutual bond of obedience and protection in return for access to certain rights; and that subjects lived under the rule of the sovereign in all British territory and regardless of under what legal system they lived.
19 into the King’s realm, forcing a reexamination of the concept of subjecthood. The war led to an unprecedented British military presence outside of Europe, especially in North America.61
Historian Bruce P. Lenman calls this Britain’s first “truly imperial war” and by the end of the peace negotiations in 1763, the empire had gained immense territories in North America, a handful of West Indian islands, as well as some possessions in India and the East Indies.62
Despite the custom set by Calvin’s Case, the status of subject did not necessarily guarantee the rights or liberties protected by English law in practice. It was especially after the
Seven Years’ War that the term subject became a blanket term to incorporate all peoples living under British rule, who therefore owed loyalty to the King. The 1763 Treaty of Paris made it clear that land won by Britain in the Seven Years’ War became part of the King’s domain and the people living there became the King’s subjects.63 The imperial administration massed these peoples together under the name of subject, but among them there were profound differences in access to rights and liberties. Historian Jack P. Greene calls the imperial system “exclusionary” and claims that the empire allowed only a proportionally select group of subjects to benefit from it.64 For example, the 1689 English Bill of Rights qualified subjects as “being Protestant.”65
This requirement excluded the majority of those peoples whose land had been ceded to the
British as a result of the Seven Years’ War, such as Native Americans and French Canadians.66
However, the British government both in London and on a smaller colonial scale generally
61 P.J. Marshall, “A Nation Defined by Empire, 1755-1776,” 208-222. 62 Bruce P. Lenman, “Colonial Wars and Imperial Instability, 1688-1793,” in The Oxford History of The British Empire, Vol. II, ed. P.J. Marshall, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 151-168. 63 “The Definitive Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Between His Britannick Majesty, and the United States of America,” CO 5/8 Part 3, The National Archives, London, United Kingdom. From now on I will refer to The National archives as TNA. 64 Greene, “Introduction: Empire and Liberty,” 1-24. 65 “English Bill of Rights 1689,” The Avalon Project, accessed October 22, 2017, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ 17th_century/england.asp. 66 Native Americans did not agree to cede their land because they did not have representatives at the negotiating table of the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Although the French ceded the land, it is clear that Indian nations claimed sovereignty and control over much of it. In other words, although transferred from the French to the British, Indians actually dominated that territory.
20 referred to these people as subjects, suggesting a potentially broader definition.
Historian Poly J. Price points out that even so, the status of subject did not translate to political membership or participation, furthering the idea that the term subject was not used for a select or privileged group of people within the empire.67 Subjecthood was theoretically equal, but subjects were not. British colonists, for example, pointed to Calvin’s Case to argue that any
British subject within the King’s dominion had access to English law, but it was clear that not all subjects had this privilege.68 Historian Lauren Benton further makes it clear that subjects were not equal and the law did not provide clarity on the issue, as there were constant disputes over the rights of subjects and debates over what law or laws governed indigenous and conquered peoples.69 Despite the gray areas of who was considered a subject and its limitations of inclusion in practice, eighteenth-century subjecthood at the most basic level could be boiled down to an obligation of loyalty to the king.70
By this time, Britain saw itself as an empire comprised of diverse peoples who were connected to the Crown by expectations of obligation and obedience in return for state protection.71 By the 1770s, the British had experienced governing French Canadians and
“superintending” Indians that inhabited the newly acquired land, two groups that were neither
English-speaking nor Protestant.72 The empire after the Seven Years’ War was, in essence, defined by military and naval power that controlled non-British, however subject, populations.
Although the people immediately incorporated into the empire after the Seven Years’ War were not born under the reigning King and were not Protestant, the 1763 Treaty of Paris declared that
67 Price, “Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship,” 73-146. 68 Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 85. 69 Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3. 70 This idea was crystalized in the 1681 case Craw v. Ramsey and the 1773 case Fabrigas v. Mostyn. 71 P.J. Marshall, “A Nation Defined by Empire,” 208-222. 72 P.J. Marshall, “A Nation Defined by Empire,” 208-222.
21 these newly controlled non-British persons were considered subjects who owed allegiance to the
Crown and were theoretically protected under the law.
Included in Britain’s territorial gains after the 1763 Treaty of Paris was the province of
Quebec. Stretching from the coast of Labrador on the Atlantic Ocean, through the Saint
Lawrence River Valley, and to the Great Lakes, Quebec had been under French royal authority since the sixteenth century. There were an estimated 80,000 to 150,000 French-speaking inhabitants in the province who had developed unique customs and culture in their isolation from
France.73 Historian Paul R. Reynolds suggests that the French Canadians were even more devoutly Catholic than the Catholic French.74 Their language and religion were two main factors that made this population a unique group of new British subjects.
Carleton acted as the Governor of Quebec from 1768 to 1778, and it was during this time that he demonstrated great fluidity in colonial administrative practice regarding subjecthood after the Seven Years’ War.75 In June 1768, Carleton was appointed the “Gov. in Chief of the
Province of Quebec.”76 While the Proclamation of 1763 had set up English law in Quebec, and while local ordinances permitted some old French customs, Carleton advocated for further political inclusion of the French Canadian population.77 He wanted to include some of the
French Canadian nobles into the local council because “the only way to make them faithful
73 Muller, “Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire,” 29-58; Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 13-14. 74 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 13. 75 From 1766-68, Carleton was Lieutenant-Governor to James Murray, but since Murray was in England during these years, Carleton acted as governor in Quebec. The Privy Council decided to replaced Murray with Carleton in 1768. As Governor from 1770-74, Carleton was in England working to push the creation of the Quebec Act. During that time, Lieutenant-Governor Hector Cramahé was in charge. Carleton would resume his executive duties in Quebec from 1774 to 1778. 76 “List of Papers Laid Out Before the House of Lords by Lord Dartmouth in May 1774,” CO 5/242, Colonial Office, The National Archives, London, United Kingdom. This source is not the commission itself, but lists that it was laid before the House of Lords. 77 The British established the Proclamation of 1763 immediately after gaining previously French territory after the Seven Years’ War. The Proclamation set up the government system for these territories, as well as drew a boundary line over which the Euro-American British inhabitants could not cross, as westward was Indian land.
22 subjects is to place a prudent confidence in and employ them.”78 Early on in his public career in
Quebec, Carleton demonstrated his desire to smoothly integrate the French Canadians into the
British sphere of subjecthood and control them under imperial power.
As a British governor and military officer, whose interpretation of his professional occupation and his own honor bound him to respect the rights of all subjects, Carleton worked to improve the lives and defend the rights of the unrepresented French Canadians. Not all officers would have had this mentality. Carleton, for example, reformed the province’s court system that had been unfairly harsh on the French Canadians, especially in cases in which they owed a small amount of debt from exorbitant fees. His changes angered the English merchants living in
Quebec who as creditors had benefitted from such corruption.79 Excessive fines were illegal, and
Carleton was concerned that they were targeted toward a certain group of subjects. Because of the unfavorable political and legal conditions in which the French Canadians lived under British rule, it is clear that Carleton’s predecessors in Quebec did not implement ideas of subjecthood that aligned closely to those put forth by the ruling of Calvin’s Case. His successful change of the colonial legal system to protect the French Canadians matched the ruling theory behind
Calvin’s Case that all subjects were protected under English law. This was one of multiple instances in which Carleton sided with the local French Canadian inhabitants. Carleton’s efforts to protect the French Canadians demonstrated his readiness to uphold the law to all people within the King’s dominion.
Understanding Non-British Subjects
Because the British Empire was coming to include more non-British peoples, philosophers and
78 Sir Guy Carleton in Muller, “Bonds of Belonging,” 29-58. As this quotation was in a footnote, Muller does not cite a recipient of Carleton’s letter or a date, but it was likely sent in 1773. 79 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 37.
23 other scientific thinkers increasingly hypothesized the source of human difference. This emerging body of works and ideas persisted throughout the mid-eighteenth century and has been retroactively called the Scottish Enlightenment. These writers commonly used the term “human variety” to encompass discussion related to human characteristics.80 Scottish Enlightenment philosophers included Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, James Beattie, George
Wallace, and John Millar, to name a few. Many were professors at universities, but not all of them were anchored in the academic sphere, such as Wallace. While there was no ideological consensus, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers concluded that culture, rather than race or skin color, was the determining factor of human difference.81
A contributing element to this argument was the belief in stadial development theory, which claimed that the various human cultures existed on a linear scale of civility—they would either progress forward or degenerate to savagery over time.82 The scale was based on the assumption that humans possess a sense of morality, some more so than others. Proponents of this theory believed that societies existed on different places on the scale because some took longer than others to advance forward. In short, stadial theory was inherently ethnocentric because Europeans judged themselves as more civil and moral than Africans and Native
Americans, for instance. Seen in the works of Adam Ferguson and John Locke, this theory became prominent in the seventeenth century. In Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil
Society, for example, he wrote “It is in their [the Indians’] present condition that we are to behold, as in a mirror, the features of out own progenitors.”83 Ferguson, among other writers,
80 Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2000), 7. 81 Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 28; Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, 7. 82 Griffin, American Leviathan, 29. 83 Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society (Dublin: Boulter Grierson, 1767).
24 recognized that the British had once been as uncivil as Indians. The British even saw themselves as more advanced than the Catholic French because they held that their religion was superior.84
Still, they believed people and societies could change and, in theory at least, became equal to the
Protestant English.
It is easy to point to the transatlantic slave trade to argue that mid-eighteenth-century
Britons viewed race as the most telling aspect of human difference—and thereby the deciding factor in inferiority. To do so, however, would be projecting largely a late eighteenth and nineteenth-century concept onto a prior time period. In the mid-eighteenth century, skin color was not the primary factor of determining human variety, at least in the minds of metropolitan
Britons. Aligned with the stadial theory of human development, James Beattie, for example, argued that Africans were two thousand years behind the development of Western Europeans, but like a child would inevitably become an adult, savage peoples would become civilized.85
Historian Roxanne Wheeler argues that religion, civility, and rank were more important in defining people. For example, an English explorer along the Gambia River noted that a group of black Christian translators considered themselves white men because of their religious beliefs.
The Englishman accepted this interpretation and tallied these translators as white men in his count of the individuals on the expedition, not believing that skin color was bound to certain characteristics in the mid eighteenth century.86 While a quick look at the British Empire’s involvement in the slave trade could suggest that the British believed in African racial inferiority, in reality, they believed Africans existed further behind on the scale of cultural development. To the British, it was not African’s skin color that made them inferior, but their perceived barbaric
84 Griffin, American Leviathan, 30. 85 James Beattie, An essay on the nature and immutability of truth, in opposition to sophistry and skepticism (Edinburgh: Denham & Dick, 1805), 309. He also claims that Indians were two thousand years culturally behind Western Europe. 86 Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, 4.
25 culture.
Not coincidentally, developing in parallel with these ethnocentric ideas of human variety was the increasing questioning of slavery through articulating natural law notions of human liberty. It is important to note that one of the chief aspects of Britons’ self-perception of their uniqueness and superiority was the maintenance and refinement of liberty throughout their history, while neighboring European countries had experienced long bouts of absolutism.87 This made the British proud of their identity. Some of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers theoretically looked to expand these proudly held concepts of human liberty to a broader group of people, particularly Africans who were being integrated into the empire through the slave trade. Adam Ferguson, for example, wrote in his Essay on the History of Civil Society that all people deserve to protect their own liberty and that “he who pretends to bestow [liberty] as a favour, has by that very act in reality denied.”88 Here, Ferguson criticized the argument that slavery actually saved Africans from their own perceived inferior culture.
The Scottish Enlightenment philosophers also questioned slavery within arguments about the public good, human nature, individual happiness, human rationality, religion, and human empathy.89 Francis Hutcheson, for instance wrote that “no endowments, natural or acquired, can give a perfect right to assume power over others without their consent,” indicating that slavery goes against human nature.90 James Beattie argued similar ideas. These writers cannot be called abolitionists, however, as they did not implore the end of the slave trade nor slavery. The
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, to add, were by no means the first to write about the horrors of
87 Jack P. Greene, “Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution,” 209. 88 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, (Dublin: Boulter Grierson, 1767), 397. 89 Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1828 (London: Verso, 1988), throughout. 90 Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, Book 3 (Glasgow: R. and A. Foulis, 1755), 204.
26 slavery. Spanish and Portuguese commentators condemned the slave trade as early as 1569.91
Historian Christopher L. Brown points to early antislavery sentiment’s ability to cause moral doubt, but inability “to stimulate political action,” allowing it to “lay dormant, inert, and ineffective in the Anglo-American world” until the end of the eighteenth century.92 The Scottish
Enlightenment thinkers were among the writers who were able to raise moral doubt. Through applying ideas of laws of nature and societal organization, and expanding upon them, to the institution of African chattel slavery, these thinkers questioned its place in an empire that prided itself on human liberty.
Carleton existed within the British imperial system that, for the first time, was being pushed by a philosophical movement to question its extensive involvement in the slave trade.
Historian Iain White argues that the Scottish Enlightenment did little to threaten the institution, but it created arguments upon which later abolitionists would expand.93 Historian Robin
Blackburn also points out that many of these writers’ arguments were ethnocentric and failed to confront the root of slavery ideology.94 However, the Scottish Enlightenment revealed that decades before the beginnings of the more visible abolition movement, there were people in the
British Empire who were deeply concerned about the morality of the slave trade. They were laying down some of the ideological foundations on which abolitionism in the Anglo-American world would rest. There is no evidence that Carleton read Scottish Enlightenment works, but these Enlightenment ideas were not purely marginal. Carleton’s actions in Quebec suggest that he was likely thinking along the same lines of some of these philosophers—that people within
91 Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 39. 92 Brown, Moral Capital, 40. 93 Iain White, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 65. 94 Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848, 58.
27 the British Empire, which prided itself on its claims to respect and protect natural human liberty, should not be discounted due to their customs, ethnicity, or race.
Conclusion
Since entering the army in his youth, the imperial systems of patronage, professionalism, and subjecthood bound Carleton’s life under the umbrella of the British Empire. Carleton abided by the rules and met the expectations of these developing systems, allowing him to advance in the military ranks and public service sphere. He experienced these systems when the empire was expanding its territorial reach, and, not coincidentally, when Scottish Enlightenment thinkers were beginning to question its involvement in the slave trade. He took actions that stood out as just because they reflected the extensive ideal of subjecthood in the empire, rather than what
British officials commonly practiced in the North American colonies. He likely believed in the superiority of the British people and their culture, but did not push non-British peoples to
“improve” by adopting British customs. His acceptance and toleration of the differences among the King’s subjects reflected his sense of duty toward all of them.
28 Chapter 2: Governor of Quebec and Defender of Empire, 1770s
Introduction
While the thirteen English colonies were experiencing unrest in the early 1770s, Carleton continued to push for reforms benefitting the French Canadians in Quebec. His attempts to aid these newly incorporated British subjects further suggests his sense of official duty to all citizens of the British Empire regardless of national origin. Carleton later expanded his judicial reforms and helped establish a new system of provincial government with the Quebec Act of 1774.
Under the Quebec Act, an official government for the province formally replaced the temporary one established in the 1763 Treaty of Paris.95 The act was supportive of these new British subjects, but it infuriated the already unsettled colonists to the south. Continental Congress, for example, in October of 1774, even wrote An Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of
Quebec that pointed out the “pernicious” effects of the act and urged the French Canadians to recognize the government’s audacious “abuse…of royal authority.”96
Carleton’s supportive relationship with the French Canadians would not last. When they did not rally to defend Quebec against American rebels in the spring of 1775, Carleton quickly condemned them, as subjects were expected to be loyal to the empire and its causes in order to receive the King’s protection. As unrest turned to revolution in the thirteen colonies, he reproached the unwillingness of non-“British” subjects, such as the French Canadian and Indian subjects, to stand and fight for the empire.97 His attitudes towards French Canadian and Indian
95 “An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America, October 7, 1774,” The Avalon Project, 2008, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_ century/quebec_act_1774.asp; Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 12. 96 “An Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, In Congress in Philadelphia,” October 26, 1774, accessed March 2, 2018, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/decres.html#que. 97 Most Indians living within the British Empire did not see themselves as subjects to a foreign king, and they acted with autonomy. The British officials, however, wanted control over the Indians living within the British realm, but they did not see them as regular subjects. A deeper discussion on this topic comes later in the chapter.
29 subjects are thus discernible; his attitude toward black slaves or free peoples of African descent during this period of his time in Quebec is less obvious. He would have had few interactions with them, as there was only a sparse black population at this time in Quebec.98 Even so, his treatment of Indians might be suggestive of his overall attitudes towards non-white subjects of the Crown.
Carleton’s actions reveal that he believed the empire was in the best interests of all subjects, even those allegedly misguided people who no longer wanted that status. His highest priority was preserving the empire’s control in North America. Carleton did not always favor naturally born British subjects nor did he always vouch for the marginalized; instead, his actions were driven by the needs of British imperial institutions and governance. In the case of a threatened imperial order, Carleton demonstrated his prioritization of subjects as a means to ensure the empire’s continuity.
The Quebec Act
Carleton held a sincere commitment to improving the functioning of the imperial system; his immense efforts in directing the Quebec Act’s creation and pushing it through Parliament demonstrate as much. Carleton believed that the act would make Quebec less likely to join the growing rebellion in the south.99 Since the Proclamation of 1763, Quebec had been incorporated into the British Empire, but the province still lacked a permanent government.100 Quebec, after all, was a new British colonial acquisition in North America with a large population. In 1770,
Carleton sailed to England hoping to influence the process in person, rather than remain victim to
98 J.M. Bumsted, The Peoples of Canada: A Pre-Confederation History (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 165. 99 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, 54. 100 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 12.
30 slow written correspondence.101 Carleton, as well as Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, believed his advice would be essential in reviewing the Board of Trade’s recommendations regarding Quebec.102 In a petition to the King, almost 60 French Canadians wrote that Carleton “perfectly comprehends the Condition of this Colony” and that they trusted him to represent them, particularly the elite seigneurs, before the Crown and lawmakers.103
Distracted by the restive colonies to the south, officials based in London had little incentive to prioritize discussions of a new government for Quebec.104 Carleton waited three years in London before Parliament would again seriously discuss the province, and meanwhile,
Lieutenant-Governor Hector Cramhé governed Quebec during Carleton’s extended absence.105
Although the metropolitan officials were preoccupied with the southern colonies, Carleton spent his time in London planning and working to obtain approval for various infrastructural improvements for his province, specifically a citadel.106 His desire to oversee the building of a defensive structure suggests his interest in asserting and defending British imperial authority in the newly claimed territory. While again his concerns would eventually fall wayside to the rebellious coastal colonies, Carleton spent his time in London trying to prove the wellbeing and service of those living within his province.
As other British officials grew concerned that the southern colonists’ complaints about the empire would spread north, they too turned their attention to Quebec. It was the Boston Tea
Party in December of 1773 that sparked lawmakers into action. In response, Parliament passed
101 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 51-52. 102 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 52. 103 “Petition for the Restoration of French Law and Custom,” 1770, in Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, Part 1, ed. Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty (Ottawa: J. de L. Taché, 1918), 422. This quotation comes from the translated version of the petition. 104 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 52. 105 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 38. 106 “Narrative of Facts Relative to American Affairs,” 20v, CO 5/232, TNA. References Carleton’s November 25, 1767 and January 20, 1768 letters to Lord Shelburne about constructing a citadel.
31 the Coercive Acts in March 1774 in an attempt to curb the southern colonists. Three months later, Lord North introduced a bill regarding Quebec’s government to Parliament.107 The bill faced immense opposition that echoed the southern colonists’ anxieties. Namely, those who opposed the bill rejected the proposals to give all real power to the royal governor without the check of a locally elected assembly, suspend English law, and protect the Catholic Church.108
Many of the act’s provisions went against English custom and belief—Lord Chatham and
Edmund Burke declared it to be “despotic, cruel, oppressive, and odious.”109
Carleton, on the other hand, favored the bill because he knew it would please his French
Canadian subjects. He believed that this was the kind of government that French colonists wanted because it preserved a system similar to what they had under the French Empire. When he gave his testimony in support of the act in both houses of Parliament during the debates, he communicated the opinions of the French Canadians. He noted that civil trials were in English, for instance, “a language they do not understand,” and the French Canadian opposition to trial by jury was “pretty unanimous.”110 He also explained that French Canadians did not desire an elected assembly, as “they had occasioned such riots and confusion, that they wished never to have one of any kind whatsoever.”111 When prodded further on that topic, as the English ardently believed in the right to an elected assembly, he responded “but if there should be one, they [the French Canadians] ought to have a share in it.”112 Carleton’s testimony suggests that he wanted lawmakers to understand the precise difficulties the French Canadians faced under
107 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 54. 108 Vernon P. Creviston, “‘No King Unless it Be a Constitutional King’: Rethinking the Place of the Quebec Act in the Coming of the American Revolution,” The Historian 73 (2011), 463-479. 109 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 55. 110 Debates of the House of Commons in the year 1774 on the bill for making more effectual provision for the government of the Province of Quebec. Drawn up from the notes of the Henry Cavendish, member for Lostwithiel, (London: Ridgeway, 1839), 102, 107. 111 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 50. 112 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 50.
32 British rule, and that he believed the Quebec Act would lay out the “freest form of government… to the present state of the colony.”113 He wanted to provide the French Canadians with a set of laws that would enable them to live as they had hoped under the British Empire and saw the act as a necessary means to provide stable governance.
In the summer of 1774, Parliament and the King approved the Quebec Act. In its final form, it included the expansion of the territory of Quebec, freedom for the French Canadians to practice Catholicism, and the maintenance of French customs through civil law.114 It reflected many of Carleton’s suggestions in order to improve his province, which he saw as an important piece of the empire.115 For example, Carleton and other officials successfully advocated that the bill expand the territory of Quebec. Under the new act, Quebec reached entirely around the
Great Lakes; south to the eastern banks of the Mississippi River and the western bank of the
Ohio River; and northwest through Labrador to the sea.116 Carleton was also the primary advocate that “Persons professing the Religion of the Church of Rome” be able to practice freely and hold public office.117 The Quebec Act reveals that Carleton strove to maintain and improve the functioning of the empire for its subjects, especially in a time of increasing chaos in another part of the empire, the thirteen colonies to the south.
The Quebec Act helped officially incorporate non-British peoples into the empire without forcing them to fully adapt to British ways. According to Carleton, many French Canadians expressed “the strongest Marks of Joy, and Gratitude, and Fidelity to The King, and to his
113 Debates of the House of Commons in the year 1774, 118. 114 The Quebec Act implemented English criminal law, however. “An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America, October 7, 1774,” The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/quebec_act_1774.asp. 115 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 55. 116 “Lord Hillsborough’s Objections to the Quebec Bill in its Present Form,” Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, 388-89. 117 “An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America, October 7, 1774,” the Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/quebec_act_1774.asp.
33 Government, for the late Arrangements made at Home in their Favor.”118 Carleton’s opinion of the French Canadians likely represented the thoughts of the elite seigneurs and the Catholic clergy, especially since he regularly interacted with these classes.119 Local elites, or seigneurs, were an important part of the hierarchy of the empire and their satisfaction was more important than the people considered below them. The majority of French Canadians, called habitants in
French, however, seemed indifferent toward the act. Historian Mark R. Anderson notes that there is little to no evidence of the habitants’ reactions to the act, if they even expressed any.120
They were likely pleased that they could continue to freely practice Catholicism, but since it had not been banned under the Proclamation of 1763, they may not have known that there was the possibility of its prohibition. The act particularly catered to the desires of the French Canadian upper classes, reassuring them that British rule would not undermine their social status or practice of traditional customs.
While Carleton saw the Quebec Act as an improvement of imperial governance, its timing coincided with and aggravated other colonial grievances against the empire. The Anglo subjects living in Quebec scorned the act because it conflicted with provisions established in the
Proclamation of 1763 for “his majesty’s antient, and faithful, and protestant subjects,” as well as customs of English law.121 In a letter to Carleton, the Earl of Dartmouth reproached him for showing “the King’s new adopted Subjects” more “justice and propriety” than “the natural born subjects.”122 As in years prior, Carleton had affected policy in Quebec in favor of the French
118 Sir Guy Carleton to Thomas Gage, September 20, 1774, CO 42/34, The National Archives, quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 56. 119 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 55. 120 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 40. 121 “Objections to the Requests Made, to Our August Sovereign,” Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, 515; Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 40. The Proclamation of 1763 established that the British now owned this land at the end of the Seven Years’ War. 122 Earl of Dartmouth to Guy Carleton, December 10, 1774, CO 42/33, The National Archives, quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 56.
34 Canadian majority population. In the case of the Quebec Act, however, it seemed to backfire on
Carleton and the lawmakers in London, as rebellious colonists added it to their list of grievances against the British government.123 From the point of view of the rebelling delegates to the
Continental Congress, the Quebec Act was an outrageous and illegal assertion of royal authority, not an attempt to provide fair and proper governance to the Catholic population of French
Canadians who had been dragged into a devoutly protestant empire.124 The Quebec Act succeeded in keeping “his [Carleton’s] province quiet and loyal,” but it stirred up more than expected in the southern colonies.125
Preparations to Defend Quebec
Shortly after the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, rebel forces captured the
British forts of Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Not only were these garrisons equipped with ammunition and other supplies, but their location in northern New York and along Lake
Champlain opened an invasion route into the province of Quebec.126
According to biographer Paul R. Reynolds, Carleton was shocked at the outbreak of rebellion.127 As a man who had spent his life both serving and being served by the British
Empire, he saw rebellion as absurd. His reaction to the rebellion highlights his conviction that the empire benefitted all its subjects. The institutions within the empire had benefited Carleton since his youth—he was born into a decent family and made his way up the military chain of command through the patronage of others. It is possible that he could not understand how other subjects were so discontented with the governance system, as he had been able to use it to his
123 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 41. 124 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 42. 125 Bumsted, The Peoples of Canada, 145. 126 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 59. 127 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 59.
35 advantage to eventually become a royal governor. Most subjects did not have the same luxuries that Carleton did, nor were they able to use the existing systems to become so successful.
Carleton received all of the liberties under English law, but these theorized benefits of subjecthood did not extend to all subjects in practice. Carleton’s status of privilege not only positioned him to question the rebels to the south, but he would condemn the French Canadians’ lack of commitment to the British Empire.
Map 2: Towns, settlements, and forts of the province of Quebec and the northern thirteen colonies. Map from Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 59.
After hearing the news that the rebels had taken Crown Point and Ticonderoga, Carleton made Montreal his headquarters and immediately worked to raise militias. Montreal would likely be the next target of approaching rebel forces, as it was the next British Canadian
36 stronghold moving north from Crown Point.128 To augment his small contingent of regular troops, Carleton called upon "the Noblesse of this Neighbourhood… to collect their Inhabitants, in order to defend themselves,” but the nobles’ efforts were met with little response.129 He reported that although “the gentlemen testified great zeal… neither their entreaties or their example could prevail upon the people.” He went on to call the “Canadian peasantry” backward in their refusal to take up arms, showing Carleton’s shift in attitude from supportive to critical of this population of subjects when they demonstrated disinterest in serving the empire.130 In the entire province, Carleton had "not six hundred Rank & File for Duty upon the whole Extent of this great River, not an armed Vessel, no places of Strength,” making the need for militia enlistments urgent. 131 He resorted to martial law on June 9, 1775, which resulted in further discontent.132 Many of the rural inhabitants refused to take up arms, refused commissions, and even “rose up in Arms” in protest when government sympathizers tried to mobilize them.133
There was a wide gap between how the French Canadians acted as new subjects and
Carleton’s expectations of them. The French Canadian subjects were less beholden to their leaders than Carleton expected they should be. The hierarchical imperial system had defined his life and he had worked his way up by meeting the expectations of his superiors. Even as a governor, Carleton was obliged to follow the instructions of his superiors in London. He expected those lower on the social hierarchy, like the habitants, to follow their superiors, like the seigneurs. In Carleton’s mind, the Québécois were disrupting the order of the empire and its
128 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 60-1. 129 Guy Carleton to Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, CO 42/34 quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 61. 130 Sir Guy Carleton to Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, Montreal, Documents of the American Revolution, 1770- 1783, edited by K.G. Davies, 21 vols. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, Ltd. 1972-1981) IX: 158. 131 Governor Guy Carleton to Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, Montreal, Documents of the American Revolution, 1770-1783 IX: 158. 132 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 76. 133 Deposition from Jean-Baptiste Féré, August 10, 1775, Philip Schuyler Papers, New York Public Library, quoted in Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 79.
37 hierarchy. Carleton noted that “too many of his British American subjects… think [it is] their undoubted right” to challenge the system, and he was concerned that the French Canadian peasantry had been “tainted” by their seditious assertions.134 The widespread refusal among the peasantry to defend the province reveals that the habitants, seigneurs, and Carleton, all had different understandings of national loyalty.
Indians in Between Empire and Rebellion
Native North Americans played significant roles in the conflict between the British Empire and its thirteen rebelling colonies, as they inhabited the continent despite British or rebel claims to land. Since the 1760s, some Indians had “sought ways to end or diversify their trade with
Britain,” fearing they would lose their independence if they relied solely on one empire for commerce.135 Other Indian nations, such as the Mohawks in the northeast, wanted to maintain their relationships with the British Empire in order to keep colonists off of their defined territory.
Some, such as the Catawbas in the southeast, saw their interests align with the rebels.136 Most
Indians, however, like the Quebec colonists, initially preferred not to get involved in a war between Britain and its subjects in the thirteen colonies. The dynamics among the British, the rebelling colonists, and the hundreds of Indian groups in the eastern half of the continent constantly changed during the course of the war. In many cases, Indian neutrality proved
134 Governor Guy Carleton to Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, Montreal, Documents of the American Revolution, 1770-1783 IX: 158-9. 135 Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015), xxiii. I will primarily use the term “Indian” as well as “Native American” when discussing the general trends of indigenous North Americans. Today, they usually call themselves “Indian” when not using the name of their particular nation. The term “Indian” helps to easily distinguish these people from those of European or African descent, which is essential for the purposes of this paper. However generalizing these terms, I recognize the immense diversity of these peoples in the eighteenth century and today. 136 DuVal, Independence Lost, xv.
38 impossible, however, because their trading networks and ways of life had become intertwined with those of the settlers and the empire.
British officials like Carleton would have considered Indians who lived within the King’s territory to be a type of subject in the loosest sense. Of course, there were many different kinds of subjects, and they were not equal. This classification as a type of subject works because the
British expected them to act under British authority and maintain their promises of loyalty to the empire—Indian nations who had not allied with the British did not fall under this category. In
1767, Carleton wrote to William Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern
District, that “all the king’s subjects should be considered as brothers, or one family” in regards to open trade between Indians and the British.137 This request to Johnson suggests Carleton’s ideology of expansive subjecthood.
In reality, however, Indians existed autonomously from the Crown, and when Indian nations and the British worked together, their relationships can be better described as allies because Indians acted outside of the internal social hierarchy of the empire. Indians were also considered clients who fought on the behalf of the British, but not without their own goals in mind.138 For centuries, the British had operated under the beliefs that Indians were savages, and they were not guaranteed rights and privileges of subjects. Most Indians, of course, neither wanted the status of subject nor the implications that came with it. Although the Crown theoretically claimed authority over allied Indians, British officials knew that they struggled for on-the-ground control over them.139
137 Guy Carleton to William Johnson, March 27, 1767, Sir Guy Carleton papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Notes kindly provided by Dr. Wayne E. Lee. 138 Wayne E. Lee, “Subjects, clients, allies, or mercenaries? The British use of Irish and Amerindian military power, 1500-1800,” in Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550-1850, ed. H.V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke, and John G. Reid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 179-217. 139 Kunal M. Parker, Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law in America, 1600-2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 24.
39 Some Indians within British territory may have abstractly seen themselves as subjects to a foreign king, but in practice they acted as sovereign peoples free from British authority.
Calvin’s Case, as previously discussed, also established a legal concept that allowed existing as subjects to the monarch but living under a different system of laws.140 The Wampanoags in the seventeenth century, for instance, viewed themselves as sovereign peoples, as well as subjects to the distant King.141 No matter their beliefs about their subjecthood to a foreign king, to Indians, imperial borders drawn on maps meant little on the ground, where they continued to occupy and defend their sovereign territories. The British and Mohawks, for instance, were allies and sovereign nations. From the Mohawks’ perspective, they lived in Mohawk country, not the
British Empire.142 In the eyes of British officials, Indians were vastly different from other subjects, as well as more independent from the Crown; nonetheless, they expected Indian support during conflict just as they would with any other loyal subjects.
Indians in Quebec
Because General Gage was unable to send more regular troops for Carleton’s efforts to defend
Quebec, and militia enlistments were scant, he encouraged Carleton to turn to the strength of the loyal Indians in order to help defend the province.143 The Indians in the province of Quebec and in upper New York, however, had their own agendas and would not agree to join the war simply because British officials wanted them to. In 1775, Carleton wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth that
“the Indians showed as much backwardness as the Canadian peasantry” for not being eager to
140 The 1773 case Fabrigas v. Mostyn drew on this part of the ruling of Calvin’s Case and further instituted it in British law. 141 Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King, 20. 142 Parker, Making Foreigners, 37. 143 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 63.
40 join the conflict.144 Eventually, however, the conflict shattered the unity of the Iroquois League, as the Oneidas and most of the Tuscaroras sided with the rebels, while the Mohawks, Cayugas, and Senecas remained loyal to the British.145 The Abenakis hoped to remain neutral as well, but their homeland of Vermont and New Hampshire became a theater of war early on, making it almost impossible for them to keep out of the conflict.146 The Seven Nations, made up of the
Indian communities living along the St. Lawrence River, were also reluctant to enter into an armed conflict.147 The Caughnawagas, of the Seven Nations, had noticed the French Canadians’ hesitancy to fight for the British, adding to their skepticism of entering a war between colonists and their king.148 The Mahicans, who lived in New England and had religious ties to New
England Congregationalists, declared their alliance with the rebels in August 1775.149 While most of the Indians within and around the province would have preferred to remain neutral, many worked with one or both sides of the conflict in order to maintain their autonomy.
As the governor of the province in which many Indians were living, Carleton expected their loyalty to the Crown and support in suppressing the rebels. In early February of 1775, he wrote to General Gage that “if I am not greatly deceived in my intelligence, not only the domiciles of the province but all the neighboring Indians are very much at your disposal wherever you are pleased to call upon them, and what you recommend shall be complied
144 Governor Guy Carleton to Earl of Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, Montreal, Documents of the American Revolution, 1770-1783 IX: 158. 145 Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 108. 146 Ethan A. Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014), 118. 147 Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 35. 148 Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 68. 149 The Mahicans lived in a community called Stockbridge. The British usually called them Stockbridge Indians. Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 122.
41 with.”150 Carleton’s sources, whatever they were, deceived him. There was fierce competition between the British and rebels to secure Indian alliance, however, Carleton expected allegiance from Indian nations—from the British perspective, the Indians were bound to support the King.
Although many Indians were already hesitant to join the war, Carleton’s fierce responses toward perceived Indian disloyalty pushed some groups even farther away from supporting the
Crown. In the spring of 1775, a party of British regulars found a group of Mahicans near
Montreal carrying a secret message intent on persuading other tribes to “fight the King’s Regular
Troops.”151 The message they carried was from Ethan Allen, the rebel colonel who led the capture of Ticonderoga. The letter conveyed that “Captain Abraham Nimham of Stockbridge, as our [the rebels’] ambassador of peace” would try to persuade the Caughnawagas to “not fight for
King George against us as we have done you no wrong and would choose to live with you as brothers.”152 The regulars bound the Mahican messengers and carried them to Montreal where they were sentenced to hang as traitors to the Crown—the ultimate claim of British sovereignty.153 Indian bands of the Seven Nations came to Montreal to protest the sentence, and some even offered to “take their place, and die for them.”154 The Caughnawagas had refused the
British call to fight and hoped to remain neutral, but after this incident they claimed to “know
150 Governor Guy Carleton to Lieut.-General Thomas Gage, February, 4, 1775, Quebec Documents of the American Revolution, 1770-1783 XVI: 46. 151 Ethan Allen to the Councillors at Caughnawaga, May 24, 1775, Crown Point, Documents of the American Revolution IX: 142-3. 152 Ethan Allen to the Councillors at Caughnawaga, May 24, 1775, Crown Point, Documents of the American Revolution IX: 142-3. 153 Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 93. 154 “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Stockbridge to a Gentleman of the Continental Congress,” June 22, 1775, in American Archives: consisting of a collection of authentick records, state papers, debates, and letters and other notices of public affairs, the whole forming a documentary history of the origin and progress of the North American colonies; of the causes and accomplishment of the American revolution; and of the Constitution of government for the United States, to the final ratification thereof, ed. Peter Force, 4th series, vol. 2 (Washington, 1837-53), 1060-61.
42 who are our enemies.”155 At first, Carleton was unyielding, but when the Indian leaders suggested that they would no longer support the British if the Mahicans were hanged, Carleton acquiesced.
This incident reveals that Carleton, like other British officials, knew that the support and cooperation of Indians would be essential in combatting the rebel forces, especially since the
French Canadian subjects had no interest in the fight. Carleton demonstrated this sentiment when he wrote “circumstanced as we are, no other measure is likely to Secure the Province.”156
His reaction to the alleged traitors reveals the expectations of utmost loyalty to the king, just like he expected from the French Canadians. Perhaps Carleton thought that severe punishment would deter other Indians from questioning British authority, but he backed down at the possibility of them joining rebellion against the empire.
After his confrontation with the Mahicans and the Caughnawagas, Carleton pursued diplomatic means in order to gain the support of the Indians in and around the province—he sent envoys with gifts, made promises of future benefits, and appealed to their long-held friendships with the British.157 In July 1775, Carleton attended a Grand Iroquois council meeting at
Montreal in order to plea for their support.158 The Oneidas and Tuscaroras did not attend, and the few Cayugas, Senecas, and Onondagas that did attend opted for neutrality.159
155 “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Stockbridge to a Gentleman of the Continental Congress,” June 22, 1775, American Archives, 1060-61. 156 Paul Lawrence Stevens, “His Majesty’s ‘Savage’ Allies: British Policy and the Northern Indians During the Revolutionary War. The Carleton Years, 1774-1778” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1984), 380. 157 Stevens, “His Majesty’s Savage Allies,” 379. 158 Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005), 174. 159 Max M. Mintz, Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 10.
43 Representatives from the Seven Nations and other regional Indians, like the Abenakis, were there, as well.160
At the council, Carleton was met with varied responses. To the Mohawks, Carleton promised to restore their lost land if they worked with the British to suppress the rebels.
Although the official Mohawk stance was neutrality, many of the Mohawks leaned toward the
British side. The Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Canada, Guy Johnson, wanted to actively oversee an army of Indians on behalf of the British. Along with Johnson, Mohawk leader Joseph
Brant tried to convince Carleton to allow the Mohawk warriors to raid rebels within Mohawk
Valley, but Carleton did not permit it.161 In fact, Carleton “did not think it prudent to let
[Indians] go beyond the 45th degree latitude, or over the Province line,” for fear that Indian raids would push the protesting colonists further into rebellion.162
While Carleton did not want the Mohawks raiding rebel property, he needed their support as scouts for the British. Depicted in a painting by contemporary artist Benjamin West, Carleton tried to persuade them to break their official neutrality and act as obedient servants to British officials and generals. According to art historian Paul Staiti, this painting no longer exists, but there is evidence of its subject.163 The Mohawks eventually sided with the British, and Joseph
Brant even travelled to London in order to affirm their loyalty to the King. Unlike Carleton, the new Secretary of State for the American Department, Lord George Germain, believed that the use of Indians in raids and warfare would greatly benefit their efforts against the rebels. Under
160 Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People, (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 208. 161 Mintz, Seeds of Empire, 10; Nash, The Unknown American Revolution, 176. 162 Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 132; Guy Johnson quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 63. 163 Paul Staiti, Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016), 71.
44 the approval of Germain and Johnson, the Mohawks would conduct raids against the rebels.164
Carleton’s judgment against the raids suggests that he wanted to keep the possibility of reconciliation with the rebels available.
The Abenakis of Odanak did not want to enter the conflict, but because of the location of their territory at a key point of the St. Lawrence River, they found themselves in the middle of
British and rebel fighting.165 Some Abenakis took action by agreeing to act as scouts at
Carleton’s request, while others fled their increasingly dangerous homeland. British officials pressured them to support the Crown through coercion and gift exchange, and Indian agents were so pushy and persistent that an Abenaki woman on the Androscoggin River claimed that her band could not hunt, eat, or sleep without being bothered by British officials.166 By 1776, many
Abenakis were feeling so much pressure to fight with the British that they fled southern Quebec to settle closer to American settlements in New England.167
Carleton directed those Abenakis that agreed to act as scouts to set up camps in Montreal, to station some of their men at St. Jean, and to monitor the rebels near Lake Champlain.168 Just as he forbade the Mohawks, Carleton ordered the Abenakis not to cross the Province line into
New York or New England.169 Because of Carleton’s persistent, albeit ambivalent, actions to control Indian wartime efforts, it is clear that he worried about Indian raiding further angering colonists and amplifying the rebellion.170
164 Mintz, Seeds of Empire, 13-15. 165 Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 118. Euro-Americans called the town Saint Francis after the mission that was established there in the late seventeenth century. 166 Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 119; Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 69. 167 Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 119. 168 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 84; Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 69. 169 Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 84. 170 Despite Carleton’s worries, British generals allowed and even encouraged Indians to raid the towns and homes of rebelling colonists throughout the conflict. Rebelling colonists saw this type of warfare as ruthless and in violation of proper ethics of war, infuriating them so much that they cited Indian raiding as a grievance against the King in the
45 In 1776, Carleton continued to take advantage of the intelligence-gathering skills of
Indian scouts while keeping them under close watch. In his account of the 1776 campaign near
Valcour Island, Lieutenant William Digby of the 53rd Regiment of Foot noted that the Indians
“were much encouraged by gen. Carlton as useful to the army.”171 Digby’s account makes it clear that Carleton believed their skills as scouts were vital, as “the day passed over in the greatest state of uncertainty” without any word from the Indian scouts on the banks of the
Champlain.172 In the case of Valcour Island, Carleton limited their involvement and forbade them from taking up arms for the empire, yet kept them nearby and under British command.
Carleton’s biographer Paul R. Nelson questions his decision not to use more Indian warriors in combat, but Carleton’s restraint stemmed from political strategy and ideological perspectives.173 Nelson believes that because of “the leanness of his military resources,”
Carleton should have “given more attention to the used of Indians.”174 In what capacity should
Carleton have implemented the Indians Nelson does not make clear, however, he seems to believe that between Guy Johnson, his cousin Sir John Johnson, and Carleton, the British administration had great influence over the Indians. Nelson seems to overestimate British power over the Indians and does not take into account that many of them had reluctantly joined the
British side. Additionally, Carleton knew that he walked a thin line with the Indians, as he had not always taken friendly means to gain their support. Being first and foremost a military man,
Carleton likely worried about the possibility of the Indians turning against loyal forces.
Although the Indian nations acted autonomously from the empire, it did not make sense for
Declaration of Independence: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” 171 Lieutenant William Digby, Some Account of the American War between Great-Britain and her Colonies, 1776- 1777, 32.413, Western Manuscripts, The British Library, London, England, 19v. 172 Digby, Account of the American War, Western Manuscripts, 29v-29. 173 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 63. 174 Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 63.
46 Carleton to sanction the martial freedom of potentially dangerous peoples, but to keep them under close watch.
Many British officials like Carleton felt they could not implement the Indians in warfare.
In October 1775, he wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth in “fear the innocent might have suffered with the Guilty” if he had allowed Indians to raid properties of the rebelling colonists.175 The colonists who were not actively involved in inciting rebellion were “innocent” from Carleton’s perspective, while the “Guilty” were those who were actively opposing the empire, particularly rebel leaders and the Continental Army. Some British officials made the distinction between these two groups, as Carleton demonstrated when he expressed he did not want to “let them [the
Indians] loose” against the colonists or the rebel militias.176 According to historian Ethan A.
Schmidt, Carleton did not trust them and feared that Indian methods of warfare would only cause more colonists to side with the rebels.177 In the same letter to Dartmouth, Carleton defended his position by explaining that he wanted to treat the rebels with “as much Humanity as our own
Safety would permit.”178 He knew that the Indians were capable of creating fear and destruction in an already fraying part of the empire, and his notions of humanity fit with a strategy of not worsening the rebellion.
Carleton’s comments to the Earl of Dartmouth indicate the differences between Anglo-
American and indigenous-American warfare and subjecthood. Carleton suggested that it was inappropriate to permit Indian warfare, which could consist of ambush and scalping, against the colonists. Not only would the use of Indians against the rebelling colonists be cruel, but it would
175 Guy Carleton to Dartmouth, October 25, 1775, CO 42/34 quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 64. 176 DuVal, Independence Lost, 79; Guy Carleton to Dartmouth, October 25, 1775, CO 42/34 quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 64. 177 Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution, 132. 178 Guy Carleton to Dartmouth, October 25, 1775, CO 42/34 quoted in Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 64.
47 also disrupt the hierarchy of subjects, as Anglo-American subjects saw themselves superior to
Indians. It was out of the question in his mind to allow the Indians, perceived as lesser subjects, to combat Anglo-American subjects. Carleton was under the impression that the colonists could be persuaded back into the empire, and using Indians to do so would only further anger and rebellion. There were different kinds of subjects with different roles and relationships to the empire, and the rebellion forced decisions about balancing them.
Because of the rebelling colonists’ challenge to their status as subjects, British officers practiced inconsistent strategies of waging war against the colonists—some saw them as British subjects who needed to be guided back into the imperial system, while others saw only as traitors and rightly deserving the harshest treatment for challenging imperial authority.179 Carleton’s desire to protect the rebelling colonists from the potential brutality of Indian warfare suggests that he still saw them as British subjects. In 1775, the thirteen colonies had not yet declared independence and were still part of the British Empire, thus the inhabitants were still British subjects. Carleton hoped that he and other British officials could coax them out of rebellion in order to preserve its strength and integrity in North America, not drive them further away from reconciliation.
Conclusion
Sir Guy Carleton left a mark on the 1770s in the form of the Quebec Act and through how he directed those within the empire as rebel forces approached the province. He influenced policy
179 Lee, Barbarians and Brothers, 145. For instance, there were several instances in 1777 in which General Washington derided British General Howe for the dishonorable actions of his officers. The British had not followed proper conduct of war during surrenders and in keeping prisoners, and perhaps these officers had not believed that they needed to adhere to the laws of war against a force of rebels, in Harold E. Selesky “Colonial America” in The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, ed. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 59-85.
48 and led the preparations to defend Quebec in the name of and for the prosperity of the British
Empire. His personal background and correspondence suggest that he believed protest against the empire was not only foolish but incomprehensible. In the face of increasing unrest, he worked to secure imperial control in Quebec by securing the loyalty of the French Canadians and attempting to gain the backing of Indian subjects. He used his influence in Parliament as well as his position as governor to allow peoples of different cultures to continue their ways within
British territory, as long as they were under the controlling hand of the empire.
49 Chapter 3: Carleton’s Last Effort for Empire, 1780-1783
Introduction
Sir Guy Carleton had just dined with Chief Justice William Smith, but he called for another audience with his trusted advisor on August 2, 1782 to “divulge what he could not” the day before.180 Carleton had received news of an unexpected turning point, and he had to relay it to
General Washington before he could discuss it with Smith.181 After eleven weeks of silence, word from Lord Shelburne in London had finally reached Carleton that “the King had instructed his Commissaries at Paris… to agree to the Independency of the Colonies.”182 This came to a surprise to Carleton, as just months before he had agreed to come out of retirement and return to
America under the impression that he and Rear Admiral Robert Digby would spearhead peace with the colonies through reconciliation, not independence.183 In May, he had even written to
General Washington that Britain was ready to begin peace negotiations—excluding independence.184
After a decade of governing Quebec, Carleton had retired to England in 1778. While in retirement, the rebellion in the thirteen North American colonies waged on, and in July of 1776 the colonies had declared their independence from Britain as the “thirteen united States of
America.”185 The empire, of course, did not recognize their claim of independence and continued to fight with the goal of controlling these colonies once again. France had even
180 W. Smith, Entry on August 2, 1782, in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778-1783, ed. William H. W. Sabine (New York: Arno Press, 1971), 541. Smith was the Chief Justice of New York and later of Quebec. 181 Sir Guy Carleton and Admiral Digby to General Washington, August 2, 1782. Haldimand Papers, Add MS 21808, The British Library, London, United Kingdom. From now on I will refer to The British Library as TBL. 182 W. Smith, Entry on August 2, 1782, in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778-1783, 541; Paul H. Smith, “Sir Guy Carleton, Peace Negotiations, and the Evacuation of New York,” The Canadian Historical Review 50 (September 1969), 245-264. 183 P. Smith, “Sir Guy Carleton, Peace Negotiations, and the Evacuation of New York,” 245-264. This is not the same Digby as mentioned in Chapter 2. 184 Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 146. 185 “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” July 4, 1776, National Archives, accessed February 24, 2018. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
50 entered the war on the American side in 1778. The conflict had lasted longer than the British expected and, along with governing other parts of the empire, it was draining their financial resources. Most of the fighting ended after the American victory at the battle of Yorktown in
1781—people immediately had different ideas of what the peace terms would look like. In
February of 1782, the government had asked Carleton to come out of retirement to act as the commander in chief and “Commissioner for restoring Peace” in America.186 In order to fulfill his duty and with hopes of piecing the North American British Empire back together, he had moved to New York City in May 1782. Unbeknownst to Carleton, however, the new
Rockingham ministry was ready to give the colonies independence.
Smith could see Carleton’s disappointment, confusion, and shock. His diaries note that
Carleton was “much affected” by the correspondence from London.187 Smith was also unsettled by the plan of reconciliation, telling Carleton that there was “Evidence of great internal Debility” within the government, yet Carleton “could assign no Reason for the Measure.”188 Also included in the letter from Shelburne was the decision that the peace treaty would be negotiated in France rather than in North America. Carleton had believed it would be his “Duty to make the most of this great Concession,” but unbeknownst to him, British and American envoys had been discussing peace terms in Paris since April, 1782.189 Carleton was likely angry that his authority to reconcile with the colonies was no longer applicable. Even worse, there would be no reconciliation at all. Carleton was shaken and his plans were turned upside down.
186 Sir Guy Carleton to Lord Shelburne, August 14, 1782, no. 5292, PRO 30/55/46, The National Archives, London, United Kingdom; Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 139. 187 W. Smith, Entry on August 2, 1782, in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778-1783, 542. 188 W. Smith, Entry on August 2, 1782, in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 1778-1783, 541-2. 189 Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth (New York: Crown, 2017), 361; Sir Guy Carleton to General Haldimand, August 3, 1782, Add MS 21808, TBL.
51 Carleton resigned his post as “Commissioner for restoring Peace” two weeks after receiving the news of impending independence. In his request for resignation, he wrote that he could no longer render “any considerable service” to the Crown.190 Chief Justice Smith believed
Carleton asked to be recalled “to stimulate the present Ministry to give him plenipotentiary
Powers” in negotiations, despite the “Firmness of the present Sett.”191 His perspectives of the war and empire, it was clear, did not align with those of the new Rockingham ministry.
Carleton’s opinions aligned with those of the Tories, or the British conservative party, who wanted the colonies to remain within the empire.192 King George III had previously expressed the basics of this argument when he protested “forfeiting the Honour and Essential Rights of my
Kingdom” through granting independence.193 His disappointment and request to resign notwithstanding, Carleton maintained his post in New York for another year due to slowness in appointing a replacement.
Discontented with his government’s decision to grant independence, Carleton nonetheless remained in New York working on the loose ends of the war from May of 1782 to December of
1783. He organized troop movements and evacuations out of New York; he arranged prisoner exchanges; he worked to protect and evacuate remaining loyal subjects; and he secured public property—all among the many other tasks he carried out in the name of the empire. In these matters he worked alongside other British officials, such as Admiral Digby, and in negotiation with the American leaders, such as General Washington. His perseverance at his post reflected his personal notions of what duty and honor required as a professional military servant of the king. He opposed granting independence to the colonies, but he performed his duties as
190 Sir Guy Carleton to Lord Shelburne, August 14, 1782, no. 5292, PRO 30/55/46, TNA. 191 W. Smith Entry, October 23, 1782, in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 564. 192 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 8. 193 King George III to Mr. Fox, May 22, 1782 in The Correspondence of King George the Third From 1760 to December 1783, ed. Sir John Fortescue, vol. VI (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1967), 41.
52 expected by the government in order to best serve the empire. As one of the highest-ranking
British officials in the thirteen colonies at the end of the conflict, Carleton recognized that his primary duty was to protect and evacuate the loyal subjects and their property. It would turn out that Carleton’s ideology of subjecthood included the black loyalists who were contested as property of American slave owners, and it was his duty, he believed, to see them protected by the law.
Loyalists, 1782-83
The war took a dramatic turn after the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, and by 1782,
British officials in London were placing their highest priority on the protection of His Majesty’s loyal subjects living in the thirteen colonies. In January 1782, Lord George Germain, the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, sent a circular letter to the colonial governors ordering the
“utmost Attention shewn to their [the loyalists’] Safety and Welfare.”194 Along with evacuating the army and public property, including artillery, one of his principal duties was to show his
“tenderest and most honourable care” to the loyalists.195 The war had driven tens of thousands of loyal subjects from their homes to areas held by the British Army, then including New York
City, Savannah, and Charlestown.196 Because of Carleton’s position and authority over the
British-held cities, these loyalist refugees were in his care. In April 1783, Lord North re- emphasized Carleton’s duty, stressing that he should continue his “Exertions to mitigate their
[the loyalists’] Distresses, wherever Opportunities shall present themselves.”197 British
194 Circular from Lord George Germain to Sir James Wright, Governor Tonyn, Lt.-Governor Bull, Sir Andrew Hammond, and Governor Haldimand, January 2, 1782, CO 5/242, TNA. 195 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 63. 196 Egerton, Death or Liberty, 197. 197 Lord North to Guy Carleton, April 18, 1783, No. 7452, PRO 30/55/67, TNA.
53 protection had given way to wholesale evacuation in the summer of 1782 when it became clear that America would receive independence.
Parliament’s announcement of its intention to grant American independence shocked and frightened the loyalists. Carleton publicized the news in New York on August 3, 1782.198
American independence would isolate loyalists from the empire and the king’s protection.
Furthermore, some loyalists reacted belligerently to the possibility of independence, writing to
Carleton that their government was deserting them in America.199 Just because most fighting had ceased did not mean supporters of the Crown were free from harassment, legal discrimination, robbery, injury, or death because of their allegiance. According to historian
Maya Jasanoff, the departure of the redcoats “spelled worry” for those who had not supported the rebel cause.200 Because of fear, uncertainties of living in America under rebel control, and allegiance to king and empire, sixty thousand white loyalists and fifteen thousand black loyalists had fled with the British troops by the end of the British evacuation in November 1783.201 As
His Majesty’s loyal subjects, they were not welcome in the colonies that had just fought against their king, so British officials both in London and in the colonies worked to ensure the protection of their subjects and the health of the empire elsewhere.
Black Loyalists and British Freedom Promises
Though the circumstances of white loyalists were precarious at the end of the war, the situations of black loyalists were even more uncertain. Thousands of black loyalists had relocated to
British-held cities during the war. Many were slaves who had fled their masters to the safety of
198 Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 149. 199 Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 145. 200 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 6. 201 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 6, 8.
54 British lines, some had been “sequestered” along with estates by the British Army, and some were soldiers who had enlisted in the British army toward the end of the war.202 Those who received wartime employment as couriers, artisans, laborers, and guides oftentimes received emancipation for their service.203 Officers often came to command ex-slaves as personal servants, as well, although historian Alan Gilbert notes that it is unclear if the officers saw their servants as property or as free.204 Nonetheless, blacks living under the protection of the British at the end of the war must have feared what could happen to them once the conflict came to an end. They did not know if they would be re-enslaved in the former colonies, or if they would receive freedom as many of them had been promised.
Fleeing loyalists and rebels alike, black men and women had sought the safety of the royal army and British officials throughout the war. In the first few years of the conflict, black loyalists received “tacit protection” behind British lines.205 As early as 1775, the British offered black men and women the reward of freedom in order to undermine the rebels’ war effort. John
Murray, the royal governor of Virginia and the fourth earl of Dunmore, offered freedom to any slave or indentured servant who was willing to take up arms for the British in November 1775.206
His proclamation led fifteen thousand blacks to join the British side.207 When British forces took
202 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 74; Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 178. 203 Michael E. Groth, “Black Loyalists and African American Allegiance in the Mid-Hudson Valley” in The Other Loyalists: Ordinary People, Royalism, and the Revolution in the Middle Colonies, 1763-1787, ed. Joseph S. Tiedemann, Eugene R. Fingerhut, and Robert W. Venables, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), 81-104 204 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 180. 205 “Précis Relative to Negroes in North America,” 1780-3, Board of Trade, CO 5/8 Part 1, TNA. Historian Simon Schama believes that this document was likely written by Carleton in 1783, in Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution (London: BBC Books, 2005), 150. 206 “Dunmore’s Proclamation, November 7, 1775,” Library of Virginia, accessed January 19, 2018. http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/docs/hires/DunmoresProclamation.pdf. 207 Egerton, Death or Liberty, 6.
55 New York City in 1776, General William Howe offered refuge to enslaved peoples who had fled rebel masters, triggering thousands more to flee to British lines.208
The British continued to offer sanctuary to blacks throughout the conflict. In 1779 and then again in 1780, British General Henry Clinton proclaimed that blacks could take up an occupation within the Royal army, whether that be in the Royal Artillery, the Black Pioneers, or as a soldier, in return for their sworn allegiance to the Crown.209 Many blacks considered his proclamation an “actual emancipation,” triggering both free and enslaved blacks to come to the
British side.210 Clinton hoped his declaration would encourage the blacks fighting for the rebels to turn coats, however, it was not a promise of explicit freedom.211 Many loyalist slave owners wrote to British officials regarding their slaves fleeing “under the sanction of Sir Henry Clinton’s
Proclamation.”212 Gilbert says that ex-slaves hoped to receive the same benefits as white loyalists, land and the rights of an Englishman, when they pledged their allegiance to the
British.213 When slaves fled to British lines, they gambled their lives for the possibility of freedom and rights as British subjects.
End of War Responsibilities
As British and American commissioners were negotiating a peace treaty in Paris, British officials in the colonies worked out how they would handle black fugitives who had come to their lines.
This was a contentious topic, not least because many of the slaves who had fled to the royal army had belonged to loyalist masters. The British had called for the protection of loyalists and their
208 Michael E. Groth, “Black Loyalists and African American Allegiance,” 81-104. 209 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 121, 182. 210 “Précis Relative to Negroes in North America,” 1780-3, CO 5/8 Part 1, TNA. 211 “Précis Relative to Negroes in North America,” 1780-3, CO 5/8 Part 1, TNA. 212 Alexander Clarke to Lord Cornwallis, July 10, 1780, CO 217/56, 57 in Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 178. 213 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 121.
56 property, but it was impossible to honor their pledge to both the white loyalists who wanted their slaves returned to them and to the loyal black subjects who were counting on the British administration’s word.
The issue of black inclusion only complicated the preparations for a large-scale civilian evacuation. In the 1780s, there was no British precedent for a civilian evacuation of this scale, nor for the classification of contested populations.214 Notions of fundamental rights of property galvanized rebel slave owners to hunt down their escaped slaves, creating more obstacles for both the British and the fleeing blacks. To make things even worse, when Carleton arrived in
New York in May of 1782, there were very few ships at his disposal.215 Despite these obstacles,
Carleton, as well as other British officials in the colonies, ultimately decided that these black men and women were British subjects and deserving of protection within the imperial system.
Carleton received dozens of letters from loyalists requesting aid to help return their slaves to them. In one request dated August 8, 1782, Rawlins Lowndes of Charlestown wrote Carleton hoping the British administration would help him find his “valuable house servant woman” who had likely escaped to New York. Like many other slave owners, Lowndes argued that war did not warrant “the continual deprivation” of his property.216 Although the loyalist slave owners still supported the Crown, they nonetheless wanted the imperial system to return the enslaved men and women that they claimed as their property.
In October of the same year, the matter of white loyalists’ property, or slave, losses confronted Carleton from South Carolina. Under pressure from white loyalists, Lieutenant
General Alexander Leslie, the commander of the King’s forces in the south, asked for Carleton’s direction on the subject of loyalists selling slaves from sequestered estates and keeping the profit
214 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 69. 215 Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, 157. 216 Rawlins Lowndes to Guy Carleton, August 8, 1782, PRO 30/55/46, TNA.
57 as compensation for their lost property.217 Carleton responded to Leslie in haste, using numbered bullet points to quickly address each topic Leslie had written about. He replied “the situation was “left to Genl. Leslie’s decision, to act as he judges best.”218 Carleton could have been conflicted over whether to help white loyalists or to uphold British honor by maintaining the promises made to black subjects. As for Leslie’s enquiry about “Respecting other Negroes,”
Carleton responded in the same bullet-point letter that those who “have been promised their freedom, to have it.”219 Carleton’s letter suggests that he wanted Leslie to judge what he saw as best for the situation in the south, as long as it ultimately upheld the promises of freedom for those who legally deserved it.
Because the fate of escaped slaves was so contentious in South Carolina, where slave labor was the backbone of the economy, Leslie and the rebelling governor of South Carolina,
John Mathews, had come to an agreement regarding the black population who had fled to British lines: those who had served in the British army, or “such Slaves as have rendered themselves particularly obnoxious by their attachment and Services to the British Troops” were to remain free, and those who had been sequestered were to be “restored to their former Owners as far as it is practicable.”220 The agreement angered Governor Mathews because the wording allowed the
British to take little action to return escaped or captured slaves to their masters, and no escaped slave would protest that. The agreement also set up a commission, composed of both American and British representatives, to estimate the value of the slaves who had received freedom,
217 Alexander Leslie to Guy Carleton, October 18, 1782, CO 5/107, TNA; “The Memorial and Humble Representation of divers Loyal Inhabitants of South Carolina,” September 9, 1782, CO 5/107, TNA. 218 “Answer to General Leslie’s queries, and remarks,” Sir Guy Carleton to Leslie, July 1782 [?], British Headquarter Papers 45: 5180, Microfilm roll 16, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Libraries. These papers are the scanned and microfilmed version of many of the PRO papers located in TNA. 219 “Answer to General Leslie’s queries, and remarks,” Carleton to Leslie, July 1782 [?], British Headquarter Papers 45: 5180, Microfilm roll 16, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Libraries. 220 “In order to prevent the great loss of property…We the Commissioners appointed by Honorable Lieut. General Leslie on the one part, and his Excellency Governor Mathews on the other,” October 10, 1782, CO 5/107, TNA.
58 compensate former owners, and search British vessels leaving port for any unauthorized slaves.221
Leslie wrote again to Carleton in October to explain that it would be near impossible to facilitate the restoration of black men and women to their former masters. Leslie cited that
British officers would not want to be separated with their source of cheap labor and that the black men and women were “exceeding unwilling” to return to slavery on the grounds that they had been offered freedom by British officials.222 According to historian Jim Piecuch, Leslie feared the “monstrous expense” of compensating American slave owners due to the large amount of black men and women desired to leave with the British.223 Despite his compromise with
Governor Mathews, Leslie’s letter to Carleton suggests that he was less than enthusiastic about returning captured slaves to their former masters. Leslie likely believed the provision to return captured slaves would be ineffective without great amounts of work, money, and stress on the
British side.
Leslie and Governor Mathews’ agreement did not last. The British naval officers met the commissioners coming to inspect the first group of evacuees with protest. The officers refused to allow them to board their ship to check if there were any unauthorized runaways onboard.
Meanwhile, outside of Charlestown’s fortifications, rebel general Nathanael Greene captured three British soldiers. Seeing the agreement between himself and Mathews as a truce, however temporary, Leslie seized in the incident to accuse Greene of violating it by capturing British men. Until the rebels returned the British soldiers, Leslie would prohibit any slaves from leaving
221 James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 9. 222 Alexander Leslie to Guy Carleton, October 18, 1782. CO 5/107, TNA. 223 Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1782 (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 322.
59 the port. Governor Mathews terminated the commission when he received word of Leslie’s actions, resulting in no rebel authority present at the evacuations from Charlestown.224
With or without the aid of the rebelling governor, Carleton and Leslie wanted the evacuation of black men and women to be organized, professional, and therefore safe. In
November of 1782, Carleton wrote to Leslie that no black men and women are to be left at port
“to whom the public faith has been pledged for their freedom.”225 This meant that anyone claiming freedom under the sanction of a British official could qualify. In the same letter,
Carleton ordered Leslie that no black men or women were “to be taken under pretense of belonging to the departments” and that anyone trying to “carry off” a former slave without a freedom certificate must pay for them.226 Carleton hoped to prohibit any officers from taking advantage of situation and assuming ownership of any of these black men or women under the appearance of permitting them freedom under British policy. Some of these black runaways had been incredibly valuable to British officers in their wartime efforts, and many were not opposed to securing that aid for after the war.
Leslie’s response to Carleton suggests that he was more willing to appease the rebel and loyalist slave owners than Carleton. Because “the Treaty entered into with Governor Mathews… has been discontinued,” he appointed “A board of Officers” to try to distinguish between the black men and women who had been captured during the war and those who had gained freedom through service to the Crown.”227 Those who had not officially served the British during the war
224 Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King, 322. 225 Sir Guy Carleton to Leslie, November 12, 1782, CO 5/107, TNA. 226 Sir Guy Carleton to Leslie, November 12, 1782, CO 5/107, TNA. 227 Alexander Leslie to Guy Carleton, November 18, 1782. CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA.
60 were at risk of being sent back to their masters. Unlike Carleton, Leslie would return some slaves to their Whig owners.228
While thousands of black men and women were able to escape their former masters in
South Carolina and Georgia, many of them were re-enslaved. According to historian
Christopher L. Brown, most of these black men and women did not receive freedom, but became the property of white loyalists relocating to the Floridas and the Caribbean.229 Approximately
500 whites and 800 of their slaves fled from Charlestown to St. Augustine, for instance.230
Unlike in New York, there was no British official to ensure the upholding of freedom promises to black men and women. Leslie and other officials in the southern colonies did not take efforts to uphold British freedom promises, but instead allowed these black men and women to be returned to a state of enslavement. It is unclear if Carleton knew that other British officials were escorting the fugitive black men and women back into slavery.
The evacuation of Charlestown was an important precursor to the larger evacuation that
Carleton knew was soon to occur in New York City, and he did not want to flounder regarding his policy of black loyalists. The situation in Charlestown made it clear to him that this topic was highly divisive, but also that the British had the upper hand in the matter because the contested population was physically within their lines. Although initially he had been relatively hands-off regarding the specifics of handling the contested population in Charlestown, Carleton came to voice his support for the maintenance of British freedom promises. Because of the debate in Charlestown, as well as Savannah, it would be no surprise to him that white
Americans, both loyalists and rebels, would protest British policy regarding escaped black men
228 Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King, 323. 229 Brown, Moral Capital, 299. 230 “A Return of Refugees & their Slaves arrived in this Province from Charlestown at the time of the Evacuation,” no. 7468, PRO 30/55/67, TNA.
61 and women. Historian Maya Jasanoff claims that Leslie’s handling of the issue would serve as
Carleton’s “model.”231 In comparison with Leslie, however, Carleton would handle the evacuation immensely differently, proving to be much more strict in ensuring liberty to black loyalists in New York.
The Treaty of Paris, 1782-83
While Carleton was dealing with the issue of black loyalists in America, American and British negotiators were drafting the provisions of peace in Paris to conclude the war. On November 29,
1782, the last day of negotiations for a preliminary peace treaty, a tired and battered American representative, Henry Laurens, arrived at the negotiating table.232 One of the largest slave owners and slave traders in the mainland colonies, Laurens insisted upon the addition of an article that forbade the British from “carrying away of any Negroes, or other Property of the
American Inhabitants” out of the colonies.233 This clause became Article VII of the peace treaty and insinuated that the British return all ex-slaves that had fled to their protection back to their masters. Theoretically, Article VII forbade Carleton from legally preventing slave owners from recapturing their escaped slaves.
Richard Oswald, the chief British negotiator, was Laurens’ “particular friend” and also deeply involved in the slave trade.234 Appearing unconcerned that the article suggested a vastly different policy than what British officials had been practicing in the colonies, Oswald informed
Thomas Townshend, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, that negotiators “have
231 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 75. 232 Edward Countryman, Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era (Plymouth, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012), 49. 233 “The Definitive Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Between His Britannick Majesty, and the United States of America,” CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA. According to Cassandra Pybus, he lost more slaves to the British than any other Carolinian in Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 61. 234 Wilson, The Loyal Blacks, 48.
62 been under the necessity of admitting” the clause.235 Surviving evidence from the negotiations, however, does not suggest that Laurens had been particularly adamant about adding the article because neither Oswald nor the other British negotiators protested it.236 The British envoys, even
Oswald, must have known that this article suggested policy that was contrary to what British officials had practiced throughout the war, yet Laurens’ and Oswald’s agendas of adding the article succeeded.
When Article VII, along with the rest of the preliminary peace articles, became public in
March of 1783, it emboldened slave owners who had lost their property in the war to get their slaves back.237 The British still held Manhattan, but slave owners and hired slave catchers surrounded the island ready to see their slaves returned or to find them on their own.238 Boston
King, one of many slaves who had escaped from South Carolina to New York City, wrote that a
“report prevailed at New-York” that all escaped slaves in the city “were to be delivered up to their masters.”239 The black men and women there feared for their lives when they “saw our masters coming from Virginia, North Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves on the streets of New-York, or even dragging them out of their beds.”240 With slave owners at large, the British officials and officers were these black refugees’ best hope for ensuring their freedom.
Carleton wanted to make sure that actions to protect the ex-enslaved men and women could not be thwarted by anyone who argued that Article VII required black runaways to be returned to their masters. To Carleton, “property” in Article VII meant property at the time the
235 Richard Oswald to Thomas Townshend, November 30, 1782. CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA. 236 See Pybus, Epic Journey’s of Freedom, 61 for a more in depth discussion about the addition of Article VII, as well as the connections between Oswald and Laurens. 237 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 85. 238 Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 189. 239 Boston King, “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher,” Methodist Magazine 21 (March 1, 1798), 105-110. 240 King, “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King,” 105-110.
63 preliminary peace treaty was signed in November of 1782, so anyone who had responded to
British calls of freedom “previous to the Treaty” were guaranteed freedom.241 On May 12, 1783,
Carleton wrote to Washington that “the negroes in question… I found free when I arrived in New
York,” which he used to justify circumventing Article VII.242 It was hard to know the truth about when an enslaved person had fled their master, but Carleton and the Board of Inquiry, the body tasked with questioning the fleeing black population, permitted the freedom of runaways based on the conveyance of their life histories. Members of the board, which was composed of
Americans and British representatives, weekly mediated disputes about runaway slaves in
Fraunces’s Tavern on Pearl Street during the month of April 1783 from ten ‘til two.243 Even without “regular protection or certificates,” members of the Board of Inquiry followed Carleton’s attitude regarding the matter and believed the stories of many black refugees who claimed to have escaped from rebel masters and fled to the British during the war.244
Carleton’s interpretation of the Treaty of Paris gave him the confidence and authority to protect black men and women in the city. An early indication of his interpretive lean came in
December of 1782, when Thomas Willis, a city employee, accepted a bribe from a slave owner to return his slave who had escaped to New York City under Clinton’s proclamation. For this,
Carleton fined him fifty guineas and exiled him from Manhattan.245 Carleton’s protection of black refugees in New York not only infuriated American slave owners, but revealed that his interpretation of the peace treaty was radically different from his American counterparts.
241 “Précis Relative to Negroes in North America,” 1780-3, CO 5/8 Part 1, TNA. Underlining transcribed from original document; Egerton, Death or Liberty, 204. 242 Sir Guy Carleton to Washington, May 12, 1783, PRO 30/55/67, TNA. 243 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 89. 244 Schama, Rough Crossings, 151. 245 Egerton, Death or Liberty, 203.
64 Although Article VII appeared to bind Carleton’s choice for the refugee black population, his conception of subjecthood led him to maintain a different interpretation of the article, in turn upholding previous promises to black British subjects. As a reputable official of the Crown, he was careful to act within the lines of the treaty, as an infraction of an international treaty would tarnish both his and his country’s honor.246 Any actions that he took while evacuating New York would have to be defensible as permitted under the treaty provisions. In April of 1783, he wrote to Robert R. Livingston, the American Secretary of Foreign Affairs, regarding the upcoming evacuation of troops and loyalists. Carleton restated Article VII of the treaty and asked that
Congress appoint American representatives “to inspect and superintend all Embarkations” at
New York.247 Carleton conveyed to Livingston his hope that honorable British and American superintendents would “represent to me [Carleton] every infraction of the Letter or Spirit of the
Treaty.”248 This letter suggests that Carleton wanted to ensure that the treaty would be upheld.
He also took great care, however, to ensure that the black men and women who had fled to New
York City received freedom. In order to do both, he interpreted the treaty in a way that allowed him to evacuate the black men and women from Manhattan—if they came to British lines before
November 1782, they were free in Carleton’s eyes. He likely knew, however, that the American negotiators had meant for all escaped black men and women to be returned.
Because Carleton established a time-based marker, albeit possible to circumvent, for declaring a person free or property in the eyes of officials, in the spring of 1783 he justifiably began issuing passes of protection to the black men and women who claimed to have fled their masters during the war. If a slave catcher or slave owner tried to recapture a black refugee who
246 Lee, Barbarians and Brothers, 167. 247 Sir Guy Carleton to Robert R. Livingston, April 14, 1783. CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA. 248 Sir Guy Carleton to Robert R. Livingston, April 14, 1783. CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA.
65 had one of these passes, they would be at risk of arrest by British forces.249 Carleton put
Brigadier General Samuel Birch in charge of seeing the passes made and distributed, and they became known as Birch Certificates.250 Less than half a dozen certificates remain in the historical record, but those that do reveal their authority rested in Howe and Clinton’s freedom proclamations, as well as Carleton’s “Permission to go to Nova-Scotia, or wherever else he may think proper.”251 Historian Cassandra Pybus notes that many of the runaways in New York, however, boarded evacuation ships before they had been issued a certificate. The process of receiving a certificate was time consuming, and the threat of slave masters in the city pushed many to gamble the risk of embarking without the signed document.252 Although the certificate distribution was not entirely effective, they suggest that Carleton made efforts to officially legitimize the black refugees’ freedom.
It is also possible that Carleton drew upon the Somerset v. Stewart (1772) case, more commonly called the Somerset Case or Mansfield judgment, to justify his treaty interpretation.
In 1772, Lord Mansfield presided over the landmark Somerset Case—the case was not landmark because of its ruling, but because the public and media incorrectly interpreted the case as having eliminated slavery within the empire. In reality, Mansfield ruled that English law did not permit a slave owner from forcing his runaway slave, James Somerset, out of England and back to the colonies. 253 This case did not eliminate slavery in the colonies, but reaffirmed its illegality in
England. Historian Simon Schama argues that the ‘Précis Relative to Negroes’ document suggests that the media and public’s “benign misreading of the Mansfield judgment” influenced
249 Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 255. 250 Egerton, Death or Liberty, 205. 251 Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 66. In each certificate, there was a blank space left for the name as well as the gender of each bearer. 252 Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 66. 253 Schama, Rough Crossings, 96-98.
66 some of Carleton’s decisions.254 While the author of the Précis is unclear, Schama believes that
Carleton drafted the account. It declares that the Board of Inquiry considered the cases of all black runaways who had fled to British lines “previous to the Treaty” because “the British
Constitution [was] not allowing of Slavery.”255 Carleton could have seen the Somerset Case as an affirmation to his actions, but since he perhaps only once cited the case, as demonstrated in the previous sentence, it was likely not his primary motivation for evacuating black men and women.
By the spring of 1783, the British had evacuated tens of thousands of black loyalists from the colonies. From New York alone, for instance, 3,000 of the 6,000 refugees headed for Nova
Scotia were of African descent. This fleet of British ships no doubt held black refugees along with white refugees, some who were technically free and some who were still slaves to a white master.256 From the Savannah and Charlestown evacuations in 1782, as many as ten thousand black men and women left on British ships.257 At this point, the Americans could do little to get their already escaped slaves back.
Carleton Meets General Washington
The dispute over the black refugees entered the highest level of American military authority when General Washington became involved in the spring of 1783. Carleton and Washington had already been in regular correspondence regarding British evacuation and prisoner exchange. On
April 21, 1783, however, Washington wrote Carleton with a different subject in mind: Article
VII of the provisional treaty. Virginian slave owners had pressured Washington to meet with
254 Schama, Rough Crossings, 151. 255 Précis Relative to Negroes in North America,” 1780-3, CO 5/8 Part 1, TNA. Underlining transcribed from original document. 256 W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 586. 257 Brown, Moral Capital, 299.
67 Carleton to demand the return of their slaves.258 Washington asked for a personal audience with
Carleton regarding the “security of american property, agreeably to the 7th. article of the provisional treaty and a resolved of Congress of the 15th. of last month.”259 The congressional resolve addressed three matters: the freeing of American prisoners; the handing over of British posts; and “for attaining the delivery of all Negroes and other property of the Inhabitants of the
United States” in the possession of the British forces.260 Carleton promptly responded and suggested that they meet in Tappan, New York, where Washington was lodged.261
On May 6, 1783, Carleton and Washington met face to face for the first time after years of long-distance communication. “An Hour was spent in Congratulations,” then the two generals and their parties took to a room for negotiations.262 After discussing the “Liberation of
Prisoners,” Washington shifted the subject to “the preservation of property… especially the
Negroes.”263 After Washington had spoken his opening words on the subject, Carleton replied that “6000 Souls” had already embarked to Nova Scotia and that he had appointed representatives to prevent “Irregular Embarkation of Property.”264 As for the contested black population, Carleton added, there was “a Registry that the Owners might eventually be paid for the Slaves who were entitled to their Freedom by British Proclamations and Promises.” Pybus suggests that American commissioners overseeing the evacuations had already informed
Washington of the embarkations, but two first-hand sources, William Smith and Jonathan
258 George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, April 30, 1783, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1938) 26: 369. 259 George Washington to Guy Carleton, April 21, 1783, Writings of George Washington, 26: 347; Washington to Duc de Lauzun, May 1, 1783, Writings of George Washington, 26: 371. 260 “Resolutions on British Withdrawal,” April 15, 1783, General Correspondence: Continental Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 4, Library of Congress, accessed January 24, 2018. https://www.loc.gov/resource/ mgw4.091_0422_0425/?sp=1. 261 Sir Guy Carleton to Washington, April 24, 1783, PRO 30/55/67, TNA. Tappan was a hamlet within Orange Town. 262 W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 585. 263 Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 256. 264 W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 586.
68 Trumbull Jr., documented that Washington acted surprised at the news. According to William
Smith’s account of the meeting, Washington acted “startled” and exclaimed, “Already imbarked!” in a moment of shock before regaining his composure.265 Even Jonathan Trumbull,
Jr., Washington’s secretary and aide de camp, noted that Washington “expressed his
Surprize.”266 If Washington had known about the embarkations, perhaps he reacted to Carleton’s appearance of apathy that he had violated Article VII of the peace treaty. Unbeknownst to
Carleton, some of Washington’s own slaves had escaped to British lines.267
Carleton’s response to Washington was composed, confident, and decided. First, he said that the black men and women were no longer property, but already free under British sanction at the time the provisional peace terms were written, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Second, he insisted “it could not have been the intention of the British Government by the Treaty of
Peace to reduce themselves to the necessity of violating their Faith to the Negroes.”268 To
Carleton, it was illogical that the British negotiators, the King, and Parliament would approve a clause that negated the work of Howe, Clinton, and other British officials. Although Carleton did not know that the British negotiators did not protest the addition of Article VII, he defended his counterparts as honorable servants of the empire. He added that conceding to the Americans’ desires of restoring slaves to their former masters would be a “dishonourable Violation of the public Faith” and disgrace to “National Honor, which must be kept with all Colours.”269
Washington argued that this conduct was against the “Letter and Spirit of the Articles of
265 W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 586. 266 “Substance of a Conference Between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton,” May 6, 1783, Writings of Washington, 26: 403. 267 Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 251; Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 67. 268 “Substance of a Conference Between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton,” May 6, 1783, Writings of Washington, 26: 404. 269 “Substance of a Conference Between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton,” May 6, 1783, Writings of Washington, 26: 404; W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 586.
69 Peace.”270 Carleton’s composed defense suggests that he predicted the Americans would see his actions as a violation of the peace treaty. He was prepared to defend his actions as upholding of the honor and reputation of the British Empire.
Carleton made it clear to Washington that the ex-slaves would not be returned to their former masters. He told the American general that the Crown instead would compensate the slave owners for their losses. Carleton saw this as ideal because “Justice was done to all Parties: the slave and his owner.”271 He reassured Washington that he had already taken measures to see this through by creating a register that identified each ex-slaves’ name, age, and occupation, as well as their former master’s name and residence.272 Historian Henry Wiencek points out that
Carleton, however, did not understand the economic underpinnings of plantation slavery in the thirteen colonies—enslaved people were not worth just the value of their persons, but were worth their labor and the offspring they could bear.273
The register Carleton spoke of was called the Book of Negroes.274 It accounted for 3,000 black men, women, and children who left from Manhattan under British sanction. Written next to some of the names of the listed refugees is “GBC,” signifying that the individual possessed a
Birch Certificate authorizing their freedom.275 The meeting with Carleton made it clear to
Washington that the American slave owners would not see the return of their runaway slaves.276
Carleton’s creation of the register was a clever ruse to appease Washington, ensure promised
270 “Substance of a Conference Between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton,” May 6, 1783, Writings of Washington, 26: 404. 271 W. Smith, Entry on May 9, 1783 in Historical Memoirs of William Smith, 586. 272 “Book of Negroes… sailing from the soil of New York between the 23rd April and 31st July 1783,” no. 10427 (16)-(157), PRO 30/55/100, TNA. 273 Wiencek, An Imperfect God, 257. 274 “No. 1…Book of Negroes,” no. 10427, 16, PRO 30/55/100, TNA. 275 “No. 1…Book of Negroes” no. 10427, 156-157, PRO 30/55/100, TNA. 276 In a letter to Governor Benjamin Harrison, Washington expressed that “the Slaves which have absconded form their Masters will never be restored to them.” George Washington to Harrison, May 6, 1783, Writings of George Washington, 26: 401.
70 liberty, and uphold imperial honor: it supposedly implied later payment to the American slave owners; yet, simultaneously permitted the black refugees to slip out of their grasp.
Carleton’s reasoning suggests that he could not abide his country breaking its word to a group of loyal subjects. Fundamental disagreements regarding the status and rights of subjects living within the empire had been the centerpiece of the rebellion in the North American colonies. In contrast to the rebels’ points of view, British officials and loyalists defended the empire as beneficial to all subjects for protection and assurance of liberty. Carleton likely wanted to highlight the empire’s willingness to provide fair treatment and liberty to its subjects, especially after thirteen colonies had just broken away on the grounds of lack of representation as subjects within an imperial system.
As someone who had spent most of their life in the military, international codes of war, often called laws of nations in the eighteenth century, likely influenced Carleton’s perspectives on the loyalist population in question, as well. Codes, or laws, of war were the expectations of behavior that officers and soldiers were supposed to observe during wartime. By the eighteenth century, European armies widely recognized and observed, however imperfectly, these expectations aimed to lessen the chaos of war and provide protection for both soldiers and civilians.277 These codes, for instance, laid out the expectations of wartime conventions, such as plunder and surrender, and established how to handle noncombatants and their property.278 As mentioned in Chapter 1, Samuel Bever wrote about the importance of officers knowing and following the laws of nations.279 The works of jurists like Hugo Grotius’s The Rights of War and
277 Lee, Barbarians and Brothers, 154-55; Barbara Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” The American Historical Review 99 (October 1994), 1137-1166. 278 Barbara Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” The American Historical Review 99 (October 1994), 1137-1166; Alexander Gillespie, A History of the Laws of War: The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Combatants and Captives (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011), 241-42. 279 Bever, The Cadet, 150.
71 Peace and Emer de Vattel’s The Laws of Nations taught officers how to follow proper wartime customs and conduct.280
These laws were important to Carleton’s situation in the 1780s because they set standards for dealing with property of the enemy—in this case, black runaways who were legally considered private property to American slave owners. It is worth noting that General
Washington had been at pains to use military discipline as a means to show that the United
States, in fact, was a sovereign state to which the laws of war applied.281 In The Laws of War and Peace, for instance, Grotius wrote that a state at war had the right to seize property of the enemy state in order to weaken the enemy state and use the property for its own benefit.282
Carleton’s actions aligned with this stance. Emer de Vattel, however, a contemporary with
Carleton, argued that private property was not fungible in war. Yet, since Carleton did not see the black men and women as private property when he found them in New York, he did not believe he was withholding American private property.
Not as private property, but as another group of His Majesty’s loyal subjects is how
Carleton viewed the black runaways. Like the French Canadians in Quebec, they existed within the realm of the British Empire and were theoretically guaranteed the King’s protection. As the
French Canadians’ adherence to Catholicism did not exclude them from subjecthood, the race of the black refugees in New York did not either. Carleton was aware that in any empire, it was the large numbers of loyal subjects willing to live under its laws in return for rights and protection
280 Lee, Barbarians and Brothers, 155-56; Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” 1137-1166. 281 Michael Howard, “Constraints on Warfare” in The Laws of War: Constrains on Warfare in the Western World, ed. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 1- 11. 282 Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard Tuck (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005); Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury, ed. Béla Kapossy and Richard Whitmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), accessed March 15, 2018. http://oll.libertyfund. org/titles/2246#Vattel_1519_1257.
72 that gave it strength. To Carleton, the dignity of an empire came from upholding honor and promises to its subjects. He paternalistically saw this population under the complete care and dependence of British aid, and he knew if the British did not help the black refugees, they would be left to the ruthlessness of the slave owners and the apathy of the American Congress.
Carleton’s actions were met with the utmost praise from British officials and fury from the Americans. Both King George III and Lord North openly approved Carleton’s upholding of honor to the black subjects. Lord North’s words likely summed up what most British officials and informed subjects felt about Carleton’s decision: it was “an Act of Justice due to them from us.”283 Upon returning to his chambers after meeting with Carleton, Washington wrote hopelessly to both Governor Harrison and Lund Washington, one of his cousins, that the slaves would never be restored to their masters.284 Washington’s despondency contrasted the American
Congress’s fury. James Madison, for instance, charged Carleton with “a palpable & scandalous misconstruction of the Treaty.”285 The American delegation in Paris also protested, writing to
British officials in London that evacuating the black runaways “has irritated the citizens of
America to an alarming degree.”286 In protecting this contested population of British subjects,
Carleton’s actions aligned with theoretical ideals of an expansive and dependable British subjecthood. Additionally, British and Americans’ contrasting responses to Carleton’s actions highlight the two country’s increasingly different stances on slavery at the end of the war.
As a military officer and imperial public official for his entire adult life, he had been obligated to follow a strict set of duties and moral codes. It was not within his mental framework
283 Lord North to Guy Carleton, August 8, 1783 CO 5/8 Part 3, TNA. 284 George Washington to Harrison, May 6, 1783, Writings of George Washington, 26: 401; Washington to Lund Washington, May 6, 1783, Writings of George Washington, 26: 406. Lund was also the manager of Washington’s estate of Mount Vernon during the conflict. 285 James Madison to Edmund Randolph, May 13, 1783, The Papers of James Madison, eds. William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal 38 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) 7: 42. 286 Wilson, The Loyal Blacks, 55.
73 to break obligations to the Crown and its subjects. It is true that Carleton wanted to maintain national honor, as many historians have argued, but it is important to highlight that his upbringing and lifelong influence of the imperial system led him to uphold both lofty ideas of honor and on-the-ground promises.287 He had a duty to follow orders from his superiors in
London, as well as a just as important duty to British subjects.
Conclusion
Throughout the conflict in the thirteen colonies, Carleton had hoped for reconciliation in order to maintain the integrity of the newly expanded British Empire. He returned to North America under the perception of negotiating peace and compromise, but the Rockingham ministry had sent him in order to clean up the mess of an unsuccessful war. Although the news of American independence left Carleton bewildered and disappointed, he maintained his post in New York
City as Commander-in-Chief. He could not prevent independence, so he used his position of authority to do the next best thing: maintain the continuity of the empire through protecting the
Crown’s loyal subjects. Despite Article VII of the Treaty of Paris, it was not an option to desert a group of loyal subjects in a hostile land. Carleton felt more obligated to support his fellow subjects than to follow an international treaty. It is clear that Carleton not only wanted to uphold
British honor and promises, but that his ultimate reasoning stemmed from his lifetime of experience serving the empire and protecting its diverse range of subjects.
287 Wilson, The Loyal Blacks; Wiencek, An Imperfect God; Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom; Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles.
74 Conclusion
Although the loss of the thirteen British North American colonies dismayed Carleton, he likely felt assured that he had upheld his notions of empire and subjecthood. In overseeing the evacuation of loyalists to safe parts of the empire, he helped advance the British imperial system elsewhere. To Carleton, it was not one’s race, national origin, or religion that mattered the most, but it was one’s loyalty to the sovereign of Britain. His prioritization of loyalty came from his background as an army officer and long-time colonial official, and British imperial mechanisms defined his mental framework, shaping his ultimate mission for the continuity of a British
Empire. After the Americans heard of Carleton’s stance on evacuating escaped enslaved peoples, Thomas Jones, a loyalist and the New York judge, suggested an explanation for the
Commander’s actions: “He possessed the honor of a soldier, the religion of a Christian, and the virtues of humanity. He loved his country, he loved his King, and was determined to see neither disgraced. He shuddered at the article that gave up the blacks, and at once resolved to apply a substitute.”288 Jones did, in fact, understand Carleton, whose decisions at the end of the war were predicated on a lifetime of service in an in increasingly professionalized military and an increasingly diverse empire. Carleton followed British laws and acted upon a theoretically expansive conception of subjecthood more so than most British officials. Ultimately, Carleton strove for the continuity of the British imperial system that had influenced his entire life.
288 Thomas Jones, History of New York During the Revolutionary War, and of the leading events in other colonies of that period, (New York: New York historical Society, 1879), 257. Jones lived from 1731 to 1792. His work was published posthumously in the nineteenth century.
75 Departing New York City: Carleton and Refugees
On November 25, 1783, British officials were ready to embark the last vessels leaving
New York City. That afternoon, Carleton led a contingent of British soldiers down the Bowery and to the wharf to board the Ceres.289 When Carleton departed from New York three days later, his black servant, Pomp, likely accompanied him across the Atlantic. Although Pomp probably had a freedom certificate, Carleton wished that he remain in his service.290 It is unclear what happened to Pomp when the Ceres arrived in England, although he could have remained a servant to Carleton like he had requested. Either Carleton’s slave or Carleton’s hired servant,
Pomp was still a subject to His Majesty, and either status he held he was below Carleton in the
British Empire’s hierarchy of subjecthood.
Before Carleton and Pomp left New York, dozens of British vessels holding refugee black men, women, and children had already departed the city to other parts of the empire.
Before departing, however, a group of British and American inspectors checked over each individual on the docks one final time to make sure that all names matched the passenger list and that every individual was recorded in the Book of Negroes. The fleeing people must have been especially worried about the presence of American inspectors; yet, in theory, the British inspectors, too, could remove anyone from the docks and ships. Last-minute removals turned out to be rare, but until onboard the ship and sailing out of the harbor, anxieties must have run rampant fearing the worst: fear that they would not, in fact, get to leave.291
Over three hundred black loyalists departed New York harbor on the L’Abondance, for instance, bound for Port Roseway, Nova Scotia. For three days at the end of July 1783, black loyalists from all walks of life boarded that ship. A Jane Thompson had come from Norfolk,
289 Reynolds, Guy Carleton, A Biography, 148. 290 Schama, Rough Crossings, 140. 291 Schama, Rough Crossings, 152.
76 Virginia, with her eleven-year-old grandchild. The Book of Negroes described her as “worn out.”292 Margaret Wallis came with her two-week-old daughter, Judith, who was likely born in a camp in the city. Juno Thomas, a middle-aged man, came from Savannah. Boston King, and his wife Violet, embarked the L’Abondance, as well as Harry Washington, one of General
George Washington’s slaves who had escaped Mount Vernon.293 Also on the vessel was Moses
Wilkinson, a Methodist preacher who would attract a large congregation in Nova Scotia. The
L’Abondance carried more black men, women, and children loyalists to Nova Scotia than any other British vessel.294 Much more important than Carleton’s legacy of fairness to all subjects were the people aboard this ship, along with the other vessels, who had seized the opportunity to live outside the bounds of slavery, and to pass that freedom to their children.
Beyond the Thirteen Colonies
With the aid of British ships, captains, crews, and provisions, free black men and women spread throughout the world to live in other British territories. Their courses were not easy, and some of them moved from their first colony of refuge to others. Many of the hundreds who went to Nova Scotia settled in Birchtown, named after the magistrate who signed their certificates of freedom. One group of black loyalists first went to East Florida, and then to Country Harbor,
Nova Scotia, and soon thereafter moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia.295 Black men and women also went to London and other parts of England. There was already a sizeable black population in the imperial metropolis, and historian Gretchen Gerzina notes that it was much less restrictive for
292 Schama, Rough Crossings, 153. 293 Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, 90. 294 Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1999), 39. 295 John W. Pulis, Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), xvi. In 1783, Britain traded East Florida for the Bahamas with the Spanish, causing inhabitants of East Florida to leave if they wanted to remain in British territory.
77 people of African and African American origin than America.296 Although England was equated with freedom, in part due to the 1772 Somerset Case, the black population from America came to be known as the “Black Poor” of London.297 Because the communities in Nova Scotia faced hardships to survive and black men and women in England did not live in much better conditions, many chose to relocate again. In London, a group of philanthropists organized and developed a resettlement effort on the west coast of Africa. The some 350 blacks that originally moved to the new colony of Sierra Leone were guaranteed land grants along with the tools and provisions in order to begin anew.298
As a result of piecing together the stories of black women and men who fled out of New
York City, historians in the last decade have made Carleton’s legacy clear.299 Today, historians know Carleton for his actions in 1782 and 1783 because they directly affected thousands of people. It is important to remember, however, that Carleton was not the only British official that helped facilitate further diaspora in this period, and although he was not an abolitionist, by the late 1780s there was an active abolitionist movement in Britain to end the transatlantic slave trade.300 Carleton was an important factor in the lives of over 3,000 black men, women, and children, however, it was the black women and men who made choices, showed determination and undying strength, and underwent hardships in order to pursue their freedom as subjects of the British Empire.
296 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, “Black Loyalists in London after the American Revolution,” in Moving On, ed. John W. Pulis, 85-102. 297 Pulis, Moving On, xviii. 298 Wallace Brown, “The Black Loyalists in Sierra Leone” in Moving On, ed. John W. Pulis, (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), 103-134. 299 Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom; Schama, Rough Crossings. 300 Britain would outlaw the transatlantic slave trade in 1807.
78 Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge my incredible parents. I have so much to thank them for, like their love, support, and my education, but I would like to highlight something for which I am particularly grateful: their encouragement to pursue what I love. They have never wavered from supporting and encouraging my love for history, which has given me the confidence to take on this project. Thank you always, Mom and Dad. I love y’all so much.
I am lucky to have had Dr. Wayne Lee as my advisor, and I thank him for being willing to advise a student that he did not know prior to this project. Without Dr. Lee’s guidance, particularly at the beginning of this project, my ideas would have failed to take form so naturally. I thank him for his honesty, for providing constant intellectual challenge, and for his attention to detail in commenting on many drafts of my work.
I would also like to thank Dr. Kathleen DuVal, my second advisor and reader, for her persistent positivity, mentorship, and detailed feedback. Her comments on my work guided me to think about familiar concepts in new ways, and her dedication to helping develop my paper was evident with every round of edits. Outside of this project, as well, she has done so much for me. Among many things, she has written countless letters of recommendation on my behalf, facilitated my independent study, given me advice and guidance, and served as a role model since I met her my sophomore year. I am so thankful for her inspiration.
To Olivia Holder, I thank for her encouragement, energy, and love. I am fortunate that we were able to experience this process together—the good and bad moments alike. Her interest in and engagement with my project gave me so much comfort and support. Becoming an immediate close friend with her has been one of the greatest outcomes of this project.
I would also like to thank one of my closest friends, Lars Knapp, for always listening to my thesis-related (and non-thesis related) struggles and triumphs throughout the year. His candor and support will never go unappreciated.
Thank you to Jeremy Howell, Jacob Bell, and Frances Cayton for taking great time to read, comment on, and discuss various drafts of my paper. To the rest of the 2017-18 History Honors Thesis class members: I am glad we had this experience together.
I would also like to thank Dr. Steve Dodge for providing me with valuable information and sources on the small and short-lived loyalist settlement at Carleton Point—without his aid, my introduction in its current form would have been impossible.
To conclude, I would like to acknowledge the Office of Undergraduate Research for granting me a Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship. With their aid I was able to travel to England to conduct research for this project.
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