The Clause
Between Yorktown and the peace, the founders tried to get back the people who had freed themselves, and wrote that demand into the treaty that ended the war. British commanders refused to return people they had promised freedom. (1781 to 1783)
The short version
- After Yorktown, Washington’s headquarters ordered Black people in the town collected and returned.
- Congress told its peace negotiators to press for the return of people carried off.
- Article VII of the treaty barred the British from “carrying away any Negroes or other Property.”
- At New York the British refused, and about 3,000 people sailed free.
Yorktown
· October 1781After the British surrender, hundreds of Black people who had sought freedom with the British were inside the captured town. Washington’s headquarters ordered them collected.
A different Sukey and her children
Sukey, about 50, a cook, and her children George Wilks, about 30, a bay pilot; Sal, about 25, a weaver; Ben, about 15; and Rachel, about 12, were taken on Chesapeake Bay and put aboard a French warship. Their enslaver asked Washington for help, and Washington wrote the French admiral asking that they be “sent back to their Master.” What became of the family is not recorded.
This Sukey is not the Sukey Sparrow of Board 1.
The instruction
· Philadelphia, September 1782On James Madison’s motion, Congress told its peace negotiators that “many thousands” of enslaved people had been carried off, and to press for their return.
The words
· Paris, November 30, 1782On the last day of the talks Henry Laurens, an American commissioner, added the words. The British were to withdraw their forces without carrying away people, and to return captured papers.
Papers were to be given back; people were only not to be carried away. The same words stood in the definitive treaty of September 3, 1783.
The American claim
American negotiators claimed that people who had escaped to the British remained enslaved and demanded their return.
The British answer
British commanders held that people who had come in under the proclamations were free, and would not break that promise.
The clause fails
· New York and Princeton, 1783- May 6, 1783 · Orangetown
Washington asked for the people by name. Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander, answered that those who had come within British lines under the proclamations were free. His officers registered every Black passenger so that Britain could answer any claim later.
- Every Wednesday · Fraunces Tavern
A joint board of British and American commissioners heard claims, through the weeks Washington spent at Rockingham. The ships kept sailing.
- May 1783 · the waterfront
Virginia’s agent Hugh Walker reported home that he was not allowed to take anyone without their consent (see the letter).
- August 23, 1783 · Princeton
The day Washington moved into Rockingham, Virginia’s delegates in Congress at Nassau Hall wrote home of “a glaring infringement of the 7th Article.”
- Judith Jackson’s case, 1783
Judith Jackson of Norfolk, Virginia, had escaped in 1779. A Virginia Loyalist who said he had bought her pulled her off a ship; the board sent her case to Carleton. She sailed for Nova Scotia on November 30. The claimant carried her child back to Virginia. In 1784 she headed a household at Birchtown. Her own words →
- November 1783 · New York
The British evacuation fleet left New York in late November. About 3,000 Black passengers had sailed free since April.
Two different clauses
People sailed free despite American demands for their return. In 1787, a different provision required the return of people escaping slavery between states. The next chapter connects that constitutional clause to Rockingham and the people associated with it.