Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

After the end of the Revolutionary War and the ceding of British territory in Florida in 1783, more than 6,000 loyalist refugees and those they enslaved flooded into the Bahamas, doubling the population of the island territory. Food and housing shortages ensued. Newcomers resented the political power of pre-war settlers, derisively called “conchs” after the mollusk. John Wells (1752-1799), printer from South Carolina, published messages of dissent, using the press he transported from Charlottesville to St. Augustine and then to the Bahamas. The British government recalled Bahamas governor, John Maxwell (circa 1730-1791), but his elderly successor, James Powell (circa 1717-1786), failed to make peace with the new loyalist residents.

Dunmore’s appointment as governor in 1787 seemed prudent. Former governor of British New York then Virginia, Dunmore was reputedly a tenacious, innovative foe of patriot forces in the Revolutionary War. However, Dunmore ran afoul of public opinion; he spearheaded the emancipation from patriot slavery during the war, and he criticized plantation owners in the Bahamas for maltreating and reenslaving people freed after joining the British cause. Riots ensued, with participants arrested, including Thomas Brown, hero to Southern loyalists. Loyalists complained that Dunmore excluded them from representation in the Bahamian assembly.