17 Facts About Black Loyalists

1.

Black Loyalists were people of African descent who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War.

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2.

Some 3,000 Black Loyalists were evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia; they were individually listed in the Book of Negroes as the British gave them certificates of freedom and arranged for their transportation.

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3.

Some European Loyalists who emigrated to Nova Scotia brought their enslaved servants with them, making for an uneasy society.

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4.

Black Loyalists promised such slave recruits freedom in exchange for service in the British Army.

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5.

Black Loyalists is exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

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6.

The Black Loyalists Pioneers worked to build fortifications and other necessities, and they could be called upon to work under fire.

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7.

Tye and the Black Brigade were the most feared Loyalists in New Jersey, and he led them in several raids from 1778 at the Battle of Monmouth to defending the British in occupied New York in the winter of 1779.

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8.

Loyalists who remained in the United States wanted Black soldiers returned so their chances of receiving reparations for damaged property would be increased, but British military leaders fully intended to keep the promise of freedom made to Black soldiers despite the anger of the Americans.

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9.

Some would capture any Black Loyalists, including those born free before the war, and sell them into slavery.

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10.

Black Loyalists found the northern climate and frontier conditions in Nova Scotia difficult and were subject to discrimination by other Loyalist settlers, many of them slaveholders.

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11.

Many descendants of Black loyalists have been able to track their ancestry by using General Carleton's Book of Negroes.

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12.

Among, the descendants of the Black Loyalists are noted figures such as Rose Fortune, a Black woman living in Nova Scotia who became a police officer and a businesswoman.

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13.

Some Black Loyalists were transported to London, where they struggled to create new lives.

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14.

Black Loyalists was purchased by George Washington in 1763; he escaped about 1776 in Virginia to British lines, eventually making his way to New York.

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15.

Black Loyalists was among free blacks evacuated to Nova Scotia by the British following the war.

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16.

Black Loyalists later took the opportunity to migrate to Freetown in Africa.

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17.

Black Loyalists's descendants are part of the Creole population, who make up 5.

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