The Black Loyalists : The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870

There is a Canadian myth about the Loyalists who left the United States after the American Revolution for Canada. The myth says they were white, upper-class citizens devoted to British ideals, transplanting the best of colonial American society to British North America. In reality, more than 10 per cent of the Loyalists who came to the Maritime provinces were black and had been slaves. The Black Loyalists tells the story of one such group who came to Nova Scotia, but didn't stay. James Walker documents their experience in Canada, following them across the Atlantic as they became part of a unique colonial experiment in Sierra Leone. Using capital case files and the assize records for Kent and Essex counties, areas that had significant black populations because they were termini for the Underground Railroad, Barrington Walker investigates the limits of freedom for Ontario's African Canadians. Through court transcripts, depositions, jail records, Judge's Bench Books, newspapers, and government correspondence, Walker identifies trends in charges and convictions in the Black population. This exploration of the complex and often contradictory web of racial attitudes and the values of white legal elites not only exposes how blackness was articulated in Canadian law but also offers a rare glimpse of black life as experienced in Canada's past."--Publisher's Description