Fleeing from Eastern Shore slavery during War of 1812
Second of a four-part series
During much of the War of 1812, the British were in control of Chesapeake Bay. In April 1814, British Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane issued and distributed a proclamation inviting Americans, anti-war whites as well as slaves, to join the British forces, promising that all who did would have “the choice of either entering into his Majesty’s sea or land forces, or of being sent as free settlers to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies.”
With that proclamation, encouraging the desertion of slaves became a deliberate policy of the British, designed to weaken and disrupt the American economy and society. British vessels now began actively cruising the shores of the bay at night, signaling with lights, often leaving with as many as a hundred men, women and children at a time. And from all up and down the Chesapeake, what had been a steady stream of runaway slaves now became a flood of refugees.
In Northampton, Joshua, Arnold and Will, who had attempted unsuccessfully to escape the year before, tried again, taking a different tack. They organized a great dance among their friends in the slave quarters to cover their absence, then paddled in a stolen canoe to a British vessel, which made itself known by the sound of “the drum & fife & fiddle.”
In April, the Northampton court began taking depositions from citizens whose slaves had deserted to the enemy: 14 in that month, another 18 in May, two more in June.
In Accomack, Levin Pitts escaped from the plantation of Tully Wise on Deep Creek, and Levi Revell from Sarah B. Revell. A second visit of a British vessel to Deep Creek on August 12, 1814, picked up six fleeing blacks, and John Custis lost two slaves — Joseph and Nat Custis — and Tully Wise lost (again) at least three more, including Rose Johnson and her two daughters, 14-year-old Esther and 1-year-old Grace.
By the end of August, Charles Ayres, Frank Joynes and John Stratton had found their way to the British, as well as still others whose names suggest but do not prove an Eastern Shore origin: Gascoyne (Gaskins), Parker, Robins, Webb, West.
The escapees came from all over the Chesapeake region, more than could be accommodated at Fort Albion, the British fort on Tangier Island, or even on all of Tangier, so the British housed them on ships anchored around the island.
After selecting from among them the men best suited for battle or as guides, they then began to make good on their promise to re-settle the rest elsewhere. As some vessels pulled up at Tangier, others pulled out headed for Bermuda with hundreds of refugees.
Charles Ball, a Maryland-born escaped slave then living as a free man, happened to be aboard one ship that anchored off Tangier carrying hundreds of escaped slaves from Calvert County, Md.
Years later, he described the crowded conditions, the “runaways ... lounging about on the main deck, or leaning against the sides of the ship’s bulwarks,” their heads “full of notions of liberty and happiness in some of the West India islands.”
Three days later, he watched as “a sloop of war cast anchor under the stern of our ship, and all the black people that were with us were immediately removed on board the ship. I was invited, and even urged to to with the others who, I was told, were bound to the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, where they would have lands given to them and where they were to be free.”
Ball declined the offer, and that evening he watched as “the sloop weighed anchor and stood down the bay with more than two hundred and fifty black people on board.
“I watched her as she sailed away from us, until the darkness of the night shut her out of my sight. ... What became of the ... mass of black fugitives that this vessel took to sea,” he recalled years later, “I never learned.”
Coming Saturday: Slaves seeking freedom under British flag find their way off the Shore.
This article is adapted from Kirk Mariner’s new book, “Slave and Free on Virginia’s Eastern Shore,” projected date of publication late 2014.