Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784-1834: The Nonviolent Transformation from a Slave to a Free Society

By Whittington Johnson

This deeply researched, clearly written book is a history of black society and its relations with whites in the Bahamas from the close of the American Revolution to emancipation. Whittington B. Johnson examines the communities developed by free, bonded, and mixed-race blacks on the islands as British colonists and American loyalists unsuccessfully tried to establish a plantation economy. The author explores how relations between the races developed civilly in this region, contrasting it with the harsher and more violent experiences of other Caribbean islands and the American South.

Interpreting church documents and Colonial Office papers in a new light, Johnson presents a more favorable conclusion than previously advanced about the conditions endured by victims of the African Diaspora and by Creoles in the Bahama Islands. He makes use of an impressive and important body of archival and secondary research. Race Relations in the Bahamas will be a book of great interest to southern historians, historians of slave societies and black communities, scholars of race relations, and general readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9781610753340

Book preview

BLACK COMMUNITY STUDIES

Willard B. Gatewood, General Editor

Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784–1834

The Nonviolent Transformation from a Slave to a Free Society

WHITTINGTON B. JOHNSON

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS

Fayetteville

2000

Copyright © 2000 by Whittington B. Johnson

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-55728-570-6

EISBN: 978-1-61075-334-0

26  25  24  23  22      5  4  3  2

Designer: Sheila Hart

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48–1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Whittington Bernard, 1931-

      Race relations in the Bahamas, 1784–1834 : the nonviolent transformation from a slave to a free society / Whittington B. Johnson.

           p.      cm. — (Black community studies)

Includes bibliographical references (p.       -     ) and index.

ISBN 1–55728–570–5 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Free Blacks—Bahamas—History.  2. Bahamas—Race relations.  3. Bahamas—History.    I. Title.   II.  Series.

F1660.B55J64   2000

972.96’00496—dc21

99–41379

CIP     

To Thomas Pearson Johnson, 1899–

My uncle and Johnson family patriarch

Acknowledgments

I am among a minority of fortunate Americanists who have had an opportunity to conduct research in Nassau, Bahamas, and London, England. In fact, my colleagues in the History Department at the University of Miami questioned whether I really made summer research trips to the Bahamas and England, or were these merely junkets. Publication of this volume should answer the question for them. Speaking of Nassau, Bahamas, I am indebted to the staff of the Department of Archives for its courteous assistance during my visits to the research room of the archives. Lulamae Gray, Prudence Morris, and Anna Christie were especially helpful. Sherriley Strachan, Jolton Johnson, David Wood, and other staff personnel helped when called upon. Similarly, I am indebted to the staffs of the Public Record Office (Kew), the British Library and Museum, the British Library Newspaper Library (Colindale), and Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, for their help in securing requested sources. Moreover, I thank the library staff of the Richter Library, University of Miami, for ordering books and microfilm through interlibrary loan and locating materials that my tired eyes could not find in the library.

The University of Miami generously provided research funds to underwrite my trips to the Bahamas and England. Throughout the research, indeed, throughout their years at the university, the provost, dean, and department chairman have been very supportive. I am especially grateful to Paul Blaney, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (1996–97), for providing research funds in the summer of 1997. The staff of the History Department, Jesus Sanchez, Lenny del Granado, and Kathryn Harrison, never tired of answering my telephone calls, assembling my mail, typing letters, and acceding to a host of other requests when I was on sabbatical leave the school year of 1996–97, when most of the work on this volume was completed. My university family have been just great. I am also indebted to my church family, especially the vestry and chalice bearers/lay readers of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation (Miami, Florida) who substituted for me for the long periods I was away on research trips, and to my priest, the Reverend J. Kenneth Major, for tolerating a part-time senior warden of the parish for much of the past three years.

It is delightful to have friends like Donald Spivey (former chairman of the History Department), Timothy S. Huebner, Vincent Thompson, and Kathy Gordon, who all graciously agreed to read the manuscript with a discerning eye. D. Gail Saunders, director of the Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas, always welcomed me when I used the archives reading room. Howard Johnson graciously agreed to read the manuscript of a total stranger. I thank all these persons for their opinions, but assume total responsibility for any shortcomings in the work.

Finally, I thank my family: Toni Lyn Johnson-Thomas, who has left the nest, Traci-liegh, and Todd Lennard continue to make father a cherished word for me. My wife, Gene, besides being an excellent cook and a full-time high school counselor, acted as my research assistant during a trip to Nassau, Bahamas, and on trips to England, in addition to keeping me well fed. She is the indispensable person in my life.

This was indeed a labor of love because of the many fine people who helped with it and because the work concerns a place that is special to me: the Bahama Islands, the birthplace of my deceased parents. My mother was born in Matthew Town, Inagua Island, and my father in Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera Island. Since I was born in Miami, I cannot claim to be Bahamian, but I am a descendant, as my aunts and uncles constantly reminded me during my childhood.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

I. Politics and Economics in the Cotton Kingdom, 1784–1815

II. Blacks and Coloreds: The Society They Created, 1784–1815

III. Race Relations in an Age of Transition, 1784–1815

IV. Confrontation and Advancement: Politics and Economics, 1816–1834

V. Blacks and Coloreds: The World in Which They Lived, 1816–1834

VI. Race Relations, 1816–1834: A Time of Promise

VII. Race Relations, 1816–1834: Emancipation, the Hidden Agenda

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations and Tables

1. State of the Population, Agriculture, etc., of the Bahama Islands in June 1788.

2. Bahama Islands.

3. The Galvanic, queen of wrecking.

4. Wreckers at work.

5. Joseph Eve, inventer of the cotton gin, and cotton gin.

6. Renaming Africans (Females).

7. Renaming Africans (Males).

8. Soldiers of the Second West India Regiment.

9. Sir James Carmichael Smyth, governor of the Bahama Islands, 1829–1833

10. Early moring in the Nassau Market, 1850.

11. Gambier residence, 1987.

12. Photograph of an African hut.

13. The Anabaptists and Bethel Baptist Church.

14. The Committee of Free People of Colour and Free Black and Colored Jurors (1833).

Introduction

The Islands comprised under the general name of Bahama Islands are so numerous . . . all of them have Not hitherto obtained names.

—Governor Thomas Shirley, 1768

—C.O. 23/22/59

Although free blacks and persons of color comprised a smaller percentage of the population than either slaves or Europeans, this group was far more active on the islands in effecting changes in race relations than were the slaves. Moreover, free blacks and persons of color were in the vanguard of the movement to build churches and schools for blacks and coloreds, and they worked to carve a niche in the economy. Similarly, they were forceful and articulate allies of colonial governors in the fight to win concessions from stubborn white leaders who were reluctant participants in the movement to end slavery and remove civil disabilities; and, together with liberated Africans, they constituted a significant part of the land-based military defense of the Bahama Islands. In short, free blacks and persons of color were the major players, among nonwhites, in pushing for humanitarian reforms, carving a niche for free nonwhite labor in the economy, and institutionalizing a mixture of African-British-American customs in Bahamian society. While the group’s small size is dwarfed by that of the slave population, free blacks and persons of color loom large in their contributions to race relations during the period.

The Bahama Islands is different from its sister islands in the British West Indies in that it is composed of many islands rather than a single landmass. Gail Saunders, in Slavery in the Bahamas, 1648–1848, groups the islands into three occupational categories—agricultural, salt, and other—and she includes twice as many islands in the agricultural category as in the other two categories combined.¹ B. W. Higman’s Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 places the Bahamas in a category that he calls marginal colonies, because they did not produce major agricultural export staples.² Which is the true Bahamas, Saunders’ or Higman’s? Both historians have accurately depicted the economic status of the Bahamas, where the inhabitants continued to farm—but mainly for domestic consumption—long after the cotton kingdom collapsed. The Bahamas’ inability to grow exportable produce placed it in the bottom tier of colonies and resulted in the grant of only a small share of the funds awarded to colonies as compensation for manumitting their slaves; it received a mere £128,296 out of the allocated £20,000,000.³ Similarly, the Bahamas receives a small share of attention from historians in general accounts of the British West Indies, accounts which tend to focus on large colonies such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and a few others. In spite of this, the history of the colony has not been neglected over the years. Michael Craton and Gail Saunders’ Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People is the best general history of the islands. Other notable general accounts are A. Deans Peggs’s A Short History of the Bahamas, Michael Craton’s A History of the Bahamas, Paul Albury’s A Story of the Bahamas, and Howard Johnson’s The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783–1933.⁴ Saunders’ work on slavery is the best on that subject. However, none of the works devote much attention to free blacks and persons of color; neither do they address the issue of race relations from 1784 to 1834, the half century between the advent of the Loyalists and the enactment of the Manumission Act. This study aims at addressing that void in the literature.

Free blacks and persons of color is the expression generally used throughout the study when referring to free nonwhites because this is the characterization that is usually found in the documents. Free blacks and persons of color probably did not interact socially as a general practice, seldom intermarried, and formed separate militia units. On the other hand, they attended the same churches and schools, worked in the same occupations, lived in the same neighborhoods, labored under the same legal encumbrances, and collaborated on petitions to end discriminatory legislation against them. Nevertheless, the constant appearance of free blacks and persons of color in the documents and the identifying of nonwhites by color in church documents suggest that a mind-set was present that perceived blacks and persons of color as separate groups. Moreover, this is probably the way nonwhites of that day referred to themselves, if text of their wills is indicative of the vernacular, because the expressions free black and free person of color, along with the gender of the departed, often appear in the title and text of wills.

There were times, however, when the term free persons of color may have been used to include both blacks and coloreds. Thus, using the terms free blacks and persons of color does not imply that the Bahamas had a mulatto aristocracy; recognition of color differences among nonwhites really amounted to a distinction without a difference. Nevertheless, this study departs from the usual practice and identifies nonwhites by color: black and colored.

The Loyalists arrived in the Bahamas at a time when the abolitionists were in the ascendancy in Great Britain and the Colonial Office came under their influence. This resulted in the abolition of the slave trade from Africa (1807), followed by the amelioration period (1823–1833), and ultimately the Manumission Act, which both the English Parliament (1833) and the Bahamas legislature (1834) passed. This succession of events caused tensions between the Assembly of the Bahamas and Britain. Although the assembly did not lodge loud protests against the abolition of the slave trade, mainly because by the time it was implemented the islands had more slaves than duties for them to perform, in the wake of the debacle in cotton production, that body did protest loudly against a result of that act: the capturing of Africans off slave ships. These Africans were then brought into the Bahamas and freed. These liberated Africans, as they have been called, were subsequently apprenticed for a period, supposedly to acclimate them prior to restoring their lost freedom. The outcry over stationing units from the West India Regiments, all black troops, most of whom were African born, in New Providence was much louder and more anguished than the outcry over the issue of liberated Africans. The British adopted this policy because of the high mortality rate among the European troops sent to the West Indies, but the assembly was oblivious to Britain’s concerns about the immense losses among its European troops at a time when France posed a serious threat to English sovereignty. White settlers were concerned about the threat posed by armed black troops in their midst. The assembly did not protest as vehemently over the mandated amelioration reforms, except for the ban on flogging female slaves, but it did harp on the point that the reforms infringed upon the property rights of slaveholders. Therefore, throughout the period encompassed in this study, Britain and the Bahamas were on opposite sides of the race relations issue, with Britain proposing progressive reforms and the assembly protesting against these.

Prior to 1784, however, the situation was different. A cursory look at the early history of the Bahama Islands reveals few bumps along the pathway of its first century and a half, which began in 1629 when the British first occupied the islands.⁵ Settlement occurred almost a decade after the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown, along the New England coast, and a few years before Lord Baltimore established his colony in Maryland. The first Africans in the Bahamas were brought to Eleuthera from Bermuda when authorities there banished all free blacks and some unruly slaves to that island.⁶ Captain William Sayle, one-time governor of Bermuda, gave the name Eleuthera, taken from a Greek word meaning freedom, to the island as a tribute to the Puritans who settled there in the hope of enjoying liberty of conscience.⁷ Sayle also named the main island of the Bahamas Providence when he was forced to land there on his way to the Carolinas.⁸ Later New was added to the name of the island to distinguish it from the little island of Old Providence, which is located to the west of the Mosquito shore.⁹ Andros Island, located twenty miles west of New Providence, was so named by the Carolina proprietors, who, in honor of Sir Edmund Andros, a person with close ties to two of the Carolina proprietors (the Earl of Craven and Sir George Carteret), received a charter in 1670 for the Bahama Islands from Charles II.¹⁰ For more than a century, therefore, the Bahamas had close political ties with the Carolinas, especially with South Carolina; and the economic ties established then continued well beyond the American Revolution.

Although the Bahamas was established concomitantly with the British North American colonies and it had close political ties to the well-connected Carolina proprietors, the islands did not grow at the same rate as those colonies. This is evident in population figures of a 1723 report that Captain George Phenney, governor of the Bahamas, submitted to his superiors in response to queries from the Colonial Office: There are about five hundred whites and two hundred negroes on this Island of Providence; about two hundred whites and forty Negroes on Elathera [Eleuthera]; and about one hundred and thirty whites and twenty negroes on Harbour Island.¹¹ Providence (the name change had not then occurred) had emerged as the largest and principal island by this time. Few islands had settlers, and whites were in a majority on all the inhabited islands. The relatively small ratio of blacks to whites suggests that economic activities were not of the labor intensive kind that required large numbers of slaves.

Complaints of Governor Phenney that economic growth and the emergence of a landowning class were retarded because the settlers did not have security of tenure on the land they occupied resulted in action to correct the situation.¹² Accordingly, in 1728 the Privy Council authorized the creation of a general assembly; and on September 29, 1729, that body met for the first time.¹³ So, almost a century after the first settlers planted their roots in the Bahamas representative government was introduced. This is much longer than the process took in the North American colonies, where it took New York longer, almost twenty years after the Dutch were defeated, than any other colony. In most of the other colonies representative assemblies were established almost immediately, once the precedent was set in Jameston, Virginia, on an uncomfortably hot August day in 1619.

The population of the Bahamas and inhabited islands expanded over time. Governor Thomas Shirley, one of the two Shirleys to occupy the position, reported in 1772 that New Providence had 1,024 whites and 1,800 reputed blacks, Harbour Island had 410 whites and 90 blacks, Eleuthera had 509 whites and 237 blacks, Exuma Island had 6 whites and 24 blacks, Cat Island had 3 whites and about 40 blacks, and Turks Islands had about 150 whites and blacks.¹⁴ By this time blacks constituted a small majority of the population, but New Providence was the only large island, so to speak, with a black majority; blacks were in a decided minority on Harbour Island, and whites outnumbered blacks by two to one on Eleuthera Island. So, New Providence was really an aberration. It had rural and urban areas similar to the situation in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, and Charleston County (Charleston), South Carolina. Moreover, New Providence had a black majority like Charleston County, South Carolina.

Marine occupations were the main means of livelihood, with seafaring leading the way. Ships were built in the Bahamas and conducted trade between North America, mainly South Carolina, and the Bahamas since the Bahamian fruits did not find a market in either Britain or the Continent. In fact, the Bahamas engaged in relatively little trade with the mother country, as the trade figures of 1771 and 1772 indicate. In the former year the value of goods exported to Britain was $2,650, and in the latter it was $1,750.¹⁵ Governor Montforte Browne, who arrived in the colony in October 1774, praised shipbuilders for their constuction of a beautiful twenty-gun ship that compared favorably with frigates built in Great Britain. He nevertheless blamed Bahamians, whom he called lazy, for the economic underdevelopment of the colony. The governor said, for instance, Bahamians failed to capitalize on opportunities to establish a whaling industry in the colony, leaving it to New England whalers to profit from this resource. The governor cited one example of a small New England sloop that made nearly three hundred casks of spermaceti oil and sold them in New England (Boston and Rhode Island) for about one dollar a gallon.¹⁶

Governor Browne was even more critical of the manner in which the soil was butchered and forests were destroyed. Speaking of this destructive practice, he said: These people now range from island to island, and so soon as the land in one place refuse to yield its increase agreeable to their expectations, or the timber by the distance from the place of cutting becomes troublesome, they immediately change to a situation more convenient and more profitable, which they first strip of all its valuable timber for exportation, to the French and Dutch Island and then burn the land to such a degree, that after yielding two or three crops it becomes impoverished, and vegetation so completely destroyed, that it can scarcely recover itself in ten years.¹⁷

Soil butchery was not unique to the Bahamas. Their North American counterparts engaged in it also, but without the same consequences because the soil was richer and more plentiful. In the Bahamas, however, soil butchery exacerbated an existing unpromising situation occasioned by very poor soil. Although the soil yielded a small crop of corn and an abundance of fruits, the future of the colony lay in growing cotton, according to the governor: The only commodity that may be considered a staple is most certainly cotton, which with a trifling encouragement from home, may be raised in the most flattering abundance, and of a superior quality to any I have seen.¹⁸ This suggests that a small quantity of cotton was probably grown in the Bahamas before the Loyalists arrived. As events later show, however, the governor’s notion about cotton production was misguided. He doubtless associated cotton growing with long summers and short winters, without giving due attention to other factors, such as soil and climatic conditions. As a consequence, Governor Browne was wrong on that score. The Bahamas was not suited to become a cotton kingdom.

The large slave population in New Providence alluded to earlier may have resulted from early efforts to grow cotton on the island. The increase in the slave population did not lead to a rush to pass stringent legislation controlling the behavior of slaves, free blacks, and free persons of color. As a matter of fact, instead of regimenting the lives of blacks the assembly concluded that free blacks and persons of color had the same obligation to defend the colony as the whites. Hence all whites, free blacks, and free persons of color between the ages of sixteen and sixty were required to serve in the militia. During Governor William Shirley’s administration, the colonial militia consisted of 300 men who were divided into two companies, one of which probably consisted of free blacks and persons of color. Later the same number of men was divided into three companies.¹⁹ The presence of the militia did not dissuade an American force of eight vessels and 550 men from invading New Providence in March 1776, defeating the outnumbered and outgunned defenders, taking the governor and several others prisoner, and returning with them to America. The signal to assemble in Fort Nassau and repel the invaders was the drumbeat.²⁰ Was this the usual manner of sounding the alarm, or was the drumbeat used to summon blacks, perhaps even slaves?

When the governor was released, he returned to New Providence and immediately became embroiled in a dispute with the legislature, which he accused of cowardice in the face of the American invaders. The council responded with an attack on its own, accusing Governor Browne of tolerating many irregularities in his administration.²¹ This bickering between the two branches of government continued in subsequent administrations, degenerating into intense hostility on a few occasions after the Loyalists arrived, with the nadir being reached during the administration of Governor James Carmichael Smyth in the early 1830s over amelioration of the slaves’ conditions. Over time, the assembly gained a well-deserved reputation for being obstreperous.

Shortly after fighting stopped in the American Revolution, the Bahamas came under two attacks. The first came from the Spaniards, who had fought on the side of the Americans, not out of sympathy for the cause but because France, the Americans’ ally, dangled the prospect of regaining Gibraltar, which Spain was forced to cede to Britain in 1713. The Spaniards attacked New Providence in May 1782 and took control of the Bahamas.²² A year later, the Americans returned, this time led by the Loyalist major Andrew Deveaux of South Carolina, who defeated the Spaniards only to learn later that the military operation was unnecessary because Britain and Spain had signed an agreement switching islands—East Florida for the Bahama Islands.²³ This set the stage for the arrival of the Loyalists in 1784.

Once they learned that East Florida was no longer a possession of Great Britian, the Loyalists, the eighteenth-century version of the seventeenth-century Plymouth Pilgrims, but with political baggage rather than religious convictions as their identifying mark, probably began to wonder whether they had used good judgment in casting their lot with the Crown. They had nothing to show for it but grief. On the other hand, the so-called bad guys, the Patriots, instead of spending time in the Tower of London waiting to join Mary Queen of Scots, another so-called traitor, were now the proud leaders of a new nation, and they would later be called, in reverence, the Founding Fathers. For some Loyalists, the move to the Bahamas would be their second in less than three years. Moving their families and personal property, including slaves, was demanding; leaving behind the soil that they had tilled and the homes that they had built was demoralizing. From all appearances, the Loyalists kept coming up short.

British leaders were sensitive to the Loyalists’ situation and they tried hard to ease the transition by providing generous land grants and underwriting the travel expenses to the Bahamas.²⁴ This eased the disappointment, but did not eradicate it. There were still many unanswered questions. The land grants seemed generous, but what kind of land were they getting? In an attempt to answer this question, Lewis Johnson, former member of the Georgia Council, visited New Providence, and he was not impressed with it: I think it very doubtful, whether more than 8, or so negroes could be profitably employed on any one plantation I have seen, he said.²⁵ The report of Lieutenant John Wilson, a British engineer stationed in St. Augustine who was ordered to the Bahamas by Sir General Guy Carleton, British commander in charge, to evaluate the situation, was not as disheartening as Johnson’s, but neither was it a ringing endorsement. Wilson said Indian corn, other vegetables, and fruits held great promise for skillful planters. This was a dig at Bahamians, whom he believed were lazy and did not till the soil properly.²⁶ It is significant that Wilson did not say the soil was conducive for planting cotton, the crop Loyalists were bent upon planting.

Diverse groups of Loyalists converged on the Bahamas from many parts of the United States: New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. From the port of New York came 1,458, at least half of whom were British soldiers and some of whom were free African Americans.²⁷ Moreover, they came from East Florida. At the time of the scheduled departure, there were four classes of blacks in East Florida: (1) those absolutely free, (2) those deserving their freedom under British proclamation, (3) those belonging to British subjects known to be their owners, and (4) those strolling about without known masters.²⁸ Free blacks from East Florida signed on to move to the Bahamas, even though it was a slave society; but many free blacks in other regions refused to settle in an area where traffick in slaves [was] carried on. This forced cancellation of plans to establish free black settlements in the West Indies.²⁹

What did the new arrivals see upon disembarking? Only a few of the islands, namely Providence, Harbour Island, Long Island, Exuma Island, Eleuthera, Turks Islands, and Abaco Island were inhabited in 1784. The white population, roughly about 1,750, was mainly English, Scotch, and Irish. The nonwhite population numbered about 2,333, most of whom were slaves. The Out Islands (presently called the Family Islands) generally consisted of uninhabited and uncultivated farmland.³⁰ In Nassau, on the other hand, the new arrivals were greeted by the sight of a town whose only public building was a delapidated courthouse and jail.³¹ Much to the dismay of the Loyalists, the Bahamas was not as developed as the places in North America they had left behind, but at least it was a permanent home.

Arguably, 1784 was the first major turning point in the history of the Bahamas, and 1834 was the second. The former witnessed the advent of the Loyalists with its attendant accomplishments and changes, some positive and some negative. The physical, political, cultural, and religious landscape changed after 1784 as the Loyalists introduced new types of architecture, a newspaper, and cultural events; they built churches, roads, government buildings and introduced dissenting religious groups. They tried to fashion the economy in a manner and direction similar to the plantation system in the American South, but failed. Without trying to do so, they contributed to the destabilization of race relations by resisting efforts of the Colonial Office to implement reforms beneficial to blacks and coloreds, both slave and free. Moreover, they fostered racial polarization through the laws and the social customs that were introduced to herald the triumph of king cotton.

Thus, unlike the previous century and a half, to which the plantation system was foreign and disagreements with Great Britain over race relations were uncommon, the fifty years from 1784 to 1834, bracketed on one end by the advent of American Loyalists and on the other by passage of the Manumission Act in the Bahamas legislature, were marked by a succession of disagreements between Britain and the Bahamas over race relations, with Britain prevailing in each instance and the dire predictions of colonial leaders failing to materialize. Moreover, conditions for free blacks and persons of color became more favorable in the Bahamas than in the American South, and Bahamian slaves generally endured less suffering than their counterparts in the other British West Indies colonies. Finally, although disagreements between Britain and the Bahamas over race relations were often heated, they were never violent. Consequently, those fifty years marked a nonviolent transformation from a slave to a free society.

CHAPTER I

Politics and Economics in the Cotton Kingdom, 1784–1815

Free people of color do enjoy the same rights of Property . . . as white inhabitants, and are secured in their persons and property by the same laws, which protect the white inhabitants.

—Peter Edwards, December 1815

The British permitted the Bahama Islands to exercise control over its political affairs; it was the only nonplantation colony to achieve this status. In the sugar colonies, in contrast, all early ones had their own planter-controlled legislatures by the end of the seventeenth century.¹ Authorized by the Privy Council in 1728, the General Assembly of the Bahama Islands first met on September 29, 1729.² By the time the Loyalists arrived in 1784, Bahamians had become accustomed to representative government, and the size of the assembly had grown to twenty. New Providence Island had the largest delegation (eight), representing Nassau and the Eastern and Western Districts of the island. Abaco Island and Exuma Island each had three assemblymen, Andros Island and Harbour Island each had two, and Long Island and Eleuthera each had one.³ Turks Island steadfastly refused to send a delegation, though authorized to do so. The governor appointed the council, the other house in the bicameral legislature, and, in turn, the Home Government appointed him. Free blacks and persons of color did not sit in the legislature or vote for its members, although no laws barred them from participating. This de facto disfranchisement was nonetheless as binding as if there were laws prohibiting the practice. Furthermore, they could not testify in court, except in cases involving debt, and were barred from jury duty.⁴ From a political perspective, therefore, the Bahama Islands was a closed society dominated by the white male minority, a common practice in the English-controlled portion of the Western Hemisphere.

The economic situation was different in that free blacks and persons of color could legally own real and personal property, including slaves, and engage in different types of economic activities, but could not sell liquors and suffered from restrictions on trading and planting.⁵ This was the situation when the Loyalists arrived and there were no policy changes afterwards. The political and economic scenes offered contrasting pictures about blacks and persons of color. In the former, they were not an integral part of the process, but in the latter, they were highly visible.

The Loyalists and Governor John Maxwell, who replaced Governor Browne, had a mutual dislike for each other. The governor was highly critical of the manner in which some Loyalists disregarded agreements made with slaves, to whom they had promised freedom upon reaching the Bahamas. He alleged that some of the venders came to the possession of them [slaves] in no other way than that of plunder and false promises.⁶ For their part, the Loyalists accused the governor of being an enemy of American Loyalists who had settled in the Bahamas and said that he greatly retarded and obstructed the settlement and population of the Bahamas.⁷ One group of Loyalists, the East