Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

In November 1782, when the provisional peace treaty was being negotiated, Laurens was called to Paris to assist Benjamin Franklin, who was leading the United States’ negotiating team. Arriving after negotiations had begun Laurens was too late to influence the primary articles of the treaty. All that remained to be settled, he later noted, were ‘a few points respecting the Fishery and the Loyalists’.18 But Laurens was to have an influence on the peace agreement as he was able to push through a late amendment, which was accepted by the chief British negotiator, who happened to be Laurens’ business partner Richard Oswald. This amendment to Article VII of the agreement, agreed by two close friends and partners in the Atlantic slave trade, concerned the fate of the black loyalists. Inserted literally into the margins, this late amendment prohibited the evacuating British forces from ‘carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American Inhabitants’.19 The terms of the preliminary peace treaty were published in March 1783. The thirty-five thousand white loyalists trapped in New York examined the feeble assurances the British negotiators had managed to wrench from the Americans and with good reason feared for their property and their welfare. The three thousand black loyalists trapped in the city alongside them feared chains and whips. They had survived their flight from slavery, evaded the slave patrols of the Southern states, fought for their liberty in epic battles and ...