Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

In 1815, the Napoleonic Wars ended in Europe: “Britain’s greatest age of global hegemony” began, and the “loyalist exodus was over” (343).

Elizabeth Johnston, after experiencing multiple displacements, established a comfortable life in Nova Scotia. By the time she began her memoirs in 1837, her descendants ranked among Nova Scotia’s social elite.

Beverley Robinson’s son and grandsons returned to New York. The fortune the family lost in the Revolutionary War reestablished, the Robinsons met old friends and reintegrated into New York society.

Dunmore lived his last days in England. His daughter married a son of King George III, without royal permission. When the king derided their mutual grandchildren, Dunmore wanted to strike him for the insult, and he never saw his king again.

Dunmore’s Bahamian rival, William Wylly, caused a crisis when he refused to allow a loyalist planter to take an enslaved person to the United States in 1817. Wylly moved to St. Vincent, but the ruins of his Bahamian plantation still stand.

The dreams of independent Native nations expressed by William Augustus Bowles and Joseph Brant died with them. In his last years, Brant lost faith in the British alliance.