The empire strikes back

Something strange happened in New York on a cold November afternoon in 1783: the city effectively turned itself inside out. Mounted on a grey horse, George Washington marched down Manhattan at the head of the victorious US army. At the same time, British troops headed frantically in the opposite direction. When they reached the southernmost tip of the island, they clambered into longboats and rowed out to the Royal Navy ships waiting in the harbour.

All this, of course, left the thousands of loyalists who had supported the British during the War of Independence in a very tricky position. It’s tempting to characterise them as a lot of 18th-century Bufton Tuftons — rich, educated Anglicans who’d made the fatal mistake of pledging allegiance to their mother country rather than their adopted one.

In fact, they were a remarkably disparate bunch. Along with staunch Anglophiles such as William Franklin — only son of the American founding father Ben — there were large numbers of American Indians. There were also 20,000 former slaves who had agreed to fight for the British in return for their freedom. Among these were two dozen who had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and also one ‘Henry Washington’, formerly the property of George.

Soon around 60,000 loyalists, fearful of what the future might hold if they hung about, also decided the time had come to get out. Some went to Britain, some to Nova Scotia, some to the West Indies, some to Australia and some — most bizarrely of all — ended up founding a Utopian community in Sierra Leone.