The Great Lisbon Earthquake and The Problem of Evil

 The sun rose brightly on Lisbon on the morning of November 1, 1755, the Feast of All Saints. The sky was calm and clear. "There never was a finer morning seen," recalled an English visitor, Rev. Charles Daly. Nothing in the situation provided a hint of the imminent event that was about to reduce "this flourishing, opulent, and populous city to a scene of the utmost horror and desolation."

Shortly after 9:30, the Portuguese capital was struck by a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami and widespread fires. This combination and aftershocks left much of the city and surrounding areas a heap of ruins. (Below: contemporary image of the Lisbon Earthquake)

In Lisbon, more than 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, or severely damaged, including palaces, convents, monasteries, and churches. The Opera House, completed only a few months before, was left a shell. 

The human cost was immense. The population of Lisbon in 1755 is estimated to have been around 200,000. Daly estimated the number of deaths at 60,000. Modern estimates vary considerably, between 10,000 and 100,000 for the city and other coastal towns and villages, including some in Spain and Morocco. Whatever the actual toll, the Lisbon earthquake ranks as one of the deadliest events of its kind in recorded history.

The earthquake had hardly finished its destructive work when people began to ask why it happened. A common view was an old favorite: God's judgment on wickedness of the citizens. Father Gabriel Malagrida put it bluntly: The cause of the catastrophe, he told the people of Lisbon, was "your abominable sins." He denounced the view that it was merely a natural event with natural causes. To dismiss it as such would discourage repentance and attempts to "avert the wrath of God." 

In the wake of the earthquake these "attempts" included the punishment of heretics and skeptics, some by hanging or burning. (Below: A priest shows the King of Portugal the best way to prevent earthquakes: burn some heretics).

Father Gabriel was, of course, a Roman Catholic, as was nearly everybody in Portugal. But foreign Protestants also attributed the quake to God's righteous anger: in this case anger at persecution of Protestants. 

Rev. John Wesley, the English founder of Methodism, was certain why God had punished Lisbon: "Is there indeed a God who judges the world? … if so, it is not surprising he should begin there, … where so many brave men have been murdered ... in a most barbarous manner … 'And shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on a city such as this?' (Below: Wesley)

Wesley was referring to persons tortured and executed by the Inquisition in their efforts to eliminate "heresy." Criticism of the Inquisition's deeds also came from another, far different perspective: that of the Enlightenment philosophes. Their main spokesman on this occasion was the French writer, Voltaire. 

One of Voltaire's favorite targets was the Church and religious fanatics. After hearing of the earthquake, he wrote to a friend, "I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens up and swallows all alike."

Voltaire became fascinated, one might say obsessed, by the earthquake. It undermined his previous view, influenced by the German philosopher Leibniz, that the world is good, indeed as good as it can be. If we could understand the Divine Plan, we would see it. Leibniz attempted to provide an answer to what is called the Problem of Evil. How a good and all-powerful God could allow evil to exist in the world. Voltaire had previously accepted that view, called optimism, but he abandoned it after the earthquake. 

In 1756, Voltaire published his famous "Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake." In it, he rejects the philosophic optimists' contention that the world is fundamentally good and Christian claims that God punishes people for their sins through natural disasters. Voltaire argues that it is illogical to believe God is both good and omnipotent. In view of the immense suffering in the world, God can't be both. Either he is unwilling to eliminate evil or unable to do so. Voltaire, a deist, opted for the latter: God is good, but not all-powerful. The excerpt below hits some of his main points:

Oh, miserable mortals! Oh wretched earth!...
Deluded philosophers who cry, "All is Well"
Hasten, contemplate these frightful ruins...
One hundred thousand unfortunates devoured by the earth...
Will you say: "This is the result of eternal laws
Directing the acts of a free and good God?"
Will you say: in seeing this mass of victims
"God is revenged, their death is the price for their crimes?"
What crime, what error did these children,
Crushed and bloody on their mothers' breasts, commit?
Did Lisbon, which is no more, have more vices
Than London and Paris immersed in their pleasures?
Lisbon is destroyed, and they dance in Paris!

In 1759, Voltaire published what is his most famous work: Candide; or Optimism. In this short novel, he elaborates on the themes of the Lisbon Earthquake poem. The main character, Candide, begins as an optimist, having been taught by his Leibnizian tutor Dr. Pangloss that this is "the best of all possible worlds." (To be fair, Pangloss's views vastly oversimplify Leibniz's.) 

After experiencing and witnessing a multitude of misfortunes, including wars, religious intolerance, horrible cruelty, dishonesty, slavery, and yes, the Lisbon Earthquake, Candide rejects Pangloss's view of the world in favor of a more pragmatic one: the world is far from as good as it could be but if we work together and treat one another with respect, we can make it more tolerable. 

(Below: Candide meets a slave in Surinam who has lost a hand in sugar refining machinery and a leg, chopped off as punishment for running away. "This the price of your eating sugar in Europe."

In sum, the Great Lisbon Earthquake was not just a monumental tragedy. It inspired a major discussion about the nature of God and the world, and the causes of evil or suffering within that world. (Below, a German image of the Earthquake). 

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November: Guy Fawkes, Trump, and the Gunpowder Plot

 November 5th, once known as Guy Fawkes Day, is the annual commemoration of the uncovering of the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1603. Had the plot succeeded it could have led to the overthrow of the government of James VI and I, the first monarch to rule the whole of the British Isles, and the deaths of the king, members of Parliament, and many others. The plotters were either executed or killed in a firefight. 

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,

Gunpowder Treason and Plot. 

I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot. 

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent 

To blow up King and Parliament.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove Old England's overthrow;

By God's Providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

And what should we do with him? Burn him! [Image: The Discovery of the Gunpowder Plotters, as fancifully imagined by Henry Perronet Briggs, 1823]

The nursery rhyme above, or variants of it, has been part of British culture since the 17th century, as has the custom of Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night. On November 5, effigies of "The Guy" are burned in bonfires all over the UK. 

The Gunpowder Plot referred to was designed to blow up Parliament during its opening session on November 5, 1605, when the king and all the members were present. Fortunately for them, the barrels of gunpowder and Guy Fawkes were discovered in the cellars the evening before. Fawkes was an explosives expert and a Catholic who had been fighting for Spain and his faith against England and Protestantism. The idea of burning "The Guy" in effigy is reflected in the rhyme's last line: "And what should we do with him? Burn him!" On the night the actual plot was foiled, the government ordered the lighting of bonfires to celebrate the King's deliverance. It's not clear when or why burning the Guy first became a part of the celebration. At first, revellers burned effigies of the Pope. Burning "The Guy" eventually became a tradition in later years, though it's not clear why Fawkes was singled out. He was only one of fourteen conspirators led by Robert Catesby. Their goal was to destroy the Protestant ruling elite with one blow and restore Catholicism in Britain. 

[Below: A contemporary Dutch image of some of the Gunpowder Plotters. Fawkes is third from the right. He is named here as "Guido" Fawkes, the name he took when fighting for the Spanish.]

Guy Fawkes himself was not burned to death. He and several co-conspirators were hanged, then cut down and drawn (disembowelled) while still alive, and finally quartered. This was the traditional punishment for High Treason. Fawkes managed to avoid the worst part. He threw himself off the scaffold, breaking his neck. He was dead when they cut off his privates, removed his guts, and chopped his body in pieces. The reason for this horrific proceeding, other than sheer sadism, was to teach a "salutary" lesson. Various body parts were hung up about the kingdom to warn people with similar ideas of their possible fate. The other plotters were killed resisting arrest. 

In 1606, Parliament passed an act making November 5 a day of thanksgiving. The celebrations often led to attacks on Catholics. This was true in British North America as well into the 19th century. But with the influx of Catholic immigrants, Halloween gradually replaced Bonfire Night as an autumn celebration in the USA. In the UK the act establishing a day of thanksgiving was repealed in 1859 out of concern for Catholic sensibilities. But by then the lighting of bonfires on November 5 had become a firmly embedded tradition in most British communities. Bonfire Night gradually became more secularized and focused on general fun and a bit of mischief. During the late 19th century effigies of the Guy generally replaced ones of the Pope on the bonfires. Lewes in East Sussex continues to burn an effigy of Pope Paul V, who was pope in 1605. 

[Below: Guy Fawkes Night at Windsor Castle, 1776]

In many communities, children made The Guy, who was then processed to the place of "execution." The children would cry out "Penny for the Guy!" I recall doing it myself in Scotland as a child. I had no idea then of the history of the tradition, and my mother was Catholic.  [Below: Procession of a Guy, 1864].

[Below: Children with their Guys, Chirk, Wrexham, Wales, 1954]

Today Bonfire Night is a purely secular social event accompanied by fireworks and enjoyed by people of all religions and none. Few observers are likely to know the religious and political origins of the tradition. In a strange turn of events, many people now view Fawkes as a counter-culture hero for attacking the Establishment. Protestors often wear Guy Fawkes masks. "Guy Fawkes was the only man who ever entered Parliament with honest intentions" is a common saying nowadays. Those who romanticize Fawkes should be aware that had the 36 barrels (2500 tons) of gunpowder under Parliament been detonated it would have destroyed everything up to 500 meters from the center of the explosion, killing hundreds of people. 

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Adventures of a Black Loyalist: Scipio Handley

 

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Scipio Handley was a free black fisherman who plied his trade in Charleston Harbor. We know very little else about him. We do know he was involved in a number of events during the revolutionary era, and after the war applied for compensation to the Loyalist Claims Commission in London. The memorial he submitted to the Claims Commission provides the little we know about Handley. It is part of thousands of pages of documentation, memorials and testimony, that now survives in the UK National Archives at Kew.

After the last royal governor, Lord William Campbell, fled Charleston in September 1775, Handley used his boat to carry supplies to the Tamar and its crew. When Lady William (Sarah Izard) decided to flee to her husband’s side, Handley took her. He was taking a great risk. The Committee of Safety prohibited any boats from town going to the British ships without a pass. Handley avoided Patriot patrols by going at night when the moon was down or when it was cloudy. But one night a patrol intercepted him ferrying supplies. They arrested him. According to Henry Laurens, Arthur Middleton wanted to hang Handley, and most of the council agreed. Laurens agreed that he should be hanged if guilty, but only after a “proper” trial. Exactly what would have constituted a proper trial in the wake of the Thomas Jeremiah incident is worth pondering. We will never know. Handley escaped from captivity one night shortly before Christmas and disappeared. That same night, a Patriot force numbering around 200 and disguised as “Indian warriors” attacked a camp of runaways and Loyalists on Sullivan’s Island. The “Indians” killed about two dozen runaways and captured others, including a few Loyalists. The rest managed to escape to the British ships anchored nearby or to Morris Island on the other side of the harbor mouth. The victors destroyed the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, which the runaways had used as a shelter. It is likely that many of them had resided there once before, on their arrival from West Africa, to perform quarantine.  In the aftermath of the Patriot attack, Lord William sailed off to St. Augustine. He took some of the runaways and Loyalists with him.

Was Scipio Handley one of them? Had he fled to the island the night he escaped, just before the Patriot attack? We don’t know, but we do know that somehow, Handley made his way to Florida, along with other Blacks and Loyalists. Or so he said in his memorial. He claimed that in escaping he had to jump from a second story window, that he landed badly, and suffered a rupture. In severe pain, he made his way to the British in St. Augustine. From there, he went on to Barbados. He took up fishing again and remained there for the next three years. Whether the British offered him a position as an auxiliary during that time he did not say.  When the British captured Savannah in the last days of 1778, they recruited him to work for their army as a Black Pioneer. He learned to make munitions, a dangerous and noisome job. He was at Savannah in the autumn of 1779 when a combined Patriot and French force attacked the city with disastrous results. He claimed that the “Negroes” did everything they could to repel the attack. They knew that “the rebels” would show no mercy to them if the British had to surrender. Handley was wounded during the battle. He was carrying grapeshot to the artillery when a musket ball hit him in the leg. It took months for the wound to heal so that he could walk. He would have taken part in the British siege of Charleston the following spring, he declared, if he had not been wounded. At the time he submitted his memorial, he stated that he remained unable to walk properly and that the pain was so bad that at times he could not work. He requested compensation from the Claims Commission in the amount of £97 for the loss of his possessions, livelihood, fishing boat, seven hogs, and furniture. The total claim would be about $25,000 in today’s money. That may seem substantial but many white planters and merchants claimed thousands of pounds, literally millions today. When the commission interviewed him  he brought along a white widow from Charleston as a testimonial witness. Mrs. Eleanor Lister. She had made and sold pies for her living, which she sometimes traded for fish from Mr. Handley. Lister testified that she believed Scipio was free and that he had possessed at least some of what he claimed. When one of the commissioners asked what kind of  furniture Handley possessed she answered tellingly: “Good enough for Negroes.” She asked the commission to give him “something” because he had “risked his life to serve His Majesty.” The commission dismissed her and asked Handley why he did not return to South Carolina to recover his property. “They’d hang me if I went back,” he replied. “During the war, Governor Rutledge ordered that all slaves who helped the British be executed.” The records of the Loyalist Claims Commission record the amounts awarded to the claimants, at least some of them. It does not contain any information about what Scipio Handley received, if any. Other Black Loyalists did receive varying amounts of compensation, although not a great deal.  The commission took about six years to make its final report on the awards. It may be that by then, Scipio Handley had died. Perhaps we will never know that either.

The Disease that Caused the Enslaved to Run Away

In 1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright of New Orleans claimed to have discovered mental or behavioral disorders "peculiar" to the enslaved black population. Cartwright, a strong advocate of slavery and a distinctive southern or "states rights" medicine, argued that blacks exhibited diseases and conditions that only a properly trained southern physician could detect and treat. He named one of these diseases "drapetomania" -- the disease that caused slaves to run away. The chief diagnostic sign of the disorder, "absconding from service," was familiar to planters and overseers. 

Unfortunately, he continued, many medical men mostly northern, had not paid enough attention to the peculiar diseases of blacks. They refused to see drapetomania for what it was: a type of insanity. Enslaved blacks suffering from drapetomania had become so mad that they tried to escape from a position God had designed them to fill and in which they were "normally" happy. Cartwright recommended a type of psychological treatment for drapetomania. To prevent or cure it, it was essential to elicit "awe and reverence" from the enslaved toward white men, their natural superiors. Masters and overseers had to make them understand that their intended lot, decreed in the Bible, was submission. They should treat the slaves graciously, supply their physical needs, and protect them from abuse. But they should never treat a slave as an equal or allow him to be anything but a "submissive knee bender." [Below: Cartwright and a submissive knee bender.]

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Slaves who exhibited restlessness in their position, who became "sulky and dissatisfied," Cartwright warned, were showing signs of developing drapetomania. The causes of dissatisfaction should be investigated and removed. If no cause could be detected, the best remedy was "whipping them out of it." I suspect many masters and overseers did not need this advice.  [Below: Abolitionist Image]

Cartwright "discovered" another type of mental illness peculiar to blacks. He called it "Dyaethesia Aethiopica, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility of Body." The man certainly had a way with words. Overseers, he said, called it "Rascality, but that doesn't sound appropriately medical." Here, I will call it "DA" for short. DA, Cartwright claimed, was more common among free blacks than slaves. Among slaves it was restricted to those whose masters allowed them too much liberty. Black freedom was the cause of the disorder and curtailing it was the cure. Signs of DA included mental lethargy and a partial loss of sensibility in the skin. The sufferers tended to do a lot of mischief that seemed intentional but was due mainly "to the stupidity of mind and insensibility of the nerves induced by the disease." Victims were liable "to break, waste and destroy everything they handle." They "tear, burn, and rend their own clothing, and paying no attention to the rights of property, steal others, to replace what they have destroyed. They slight their work.... They raise disturbances with their overseers and fellow servants without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to punishment."

Cartwright conceded that northern physicians had observed the signs and symptoms of DA but had incorrectly attributed them to slavery. They ignored the greater prevalence of the signs and symptoms. among blacks who had been free for generations. DA was "the natural offspring of negro liberty -- the liberty to be idle, wallow in filth, and to indulge in improper food and drinks." DA could be easily cured "if treated on sound psychological principles." The main requirement was to stimulate the skin, which was "dry, thick. and harsh to the touch," and the liver, which was inactive. The "patient" should be scrubbed with warm water and soap, then covered in oil, which should be slapped in with "a broad leather strap." Slapped here looks like a euphemism for "whipped."

Next,  the "patient" should be required to do some hard work in the fresh air and sunshine, to force him to expand his lungs. After resting from labor, he should be fed "some good wholesome food, well-seasoned with spices and mixed with vegetables." After more work, rest, and lots of liquids, he should be washed and sent to a clean bed in a warm room. Repeating this treatment each day would quickly bring about a cure "in all cases that are not complicated by chronic visceral derangement."   

Cartwright's descriptions mirrored the views of contemporary asylum doctors who argued that many antisocial behaviors were the result of mental illness. As such, they should be treated, not punished. Unlike Cartwright, asylum doctors did not prescribe whipping as a treatment. They denounced the use of corporal punishment of the mentally ill. In contrast, Cartwright prescribed whipping as a necessary means of restoring the proper order of things and thus good for the slave as well as the master. It was in fact, "humane." Otherwise, Cartwright's therapies did not differ in some respects from those experienced by patients in contemporary lunatic asylums. They also emphasized work in the fresh air, good diet, bathing, and rest. The difference is that Cartwright's descriptions and prescriptions were embedded in a world view that accepted slavery as a natural, God-given institution, however "peculiar." They were part of what historians have called The Proslavery Argument and what today is often called "scientific racism." In short, they were a delusional, perverse reaction to a natural human desire.

Sources: Samuel Cartwright, "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race," De Bow's Review 11 (1851) 331-36, 643-52.

Peter McCandless, Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

The Lynching of Thomas Jeremiah, 1775

In the spring of 1775, as South Carolina and other American colonies moved towards rebellion against British rule, frantic rumors swirled through the colony and its capital, Charleston. 

(Image: View of Charlestown in 1768, by Pierre Charles Canot, LOC)

Hysterical Carolinians accused the British government of plotting a rebellion of enslaved Africans against their masters. The hypocrisy of slaveholders demanding freedom from "royal tyranny" was palpable, but is often overlooked even today. The enslaved constituted the majority of South Carolina's population, the only American colony where this was the case. Rumors of a slave rebellion always aroused panic. In June Charleston authorities arrested several slaves and a free black, Thomas Jeremiah. At the time, Jeremiah was one of only about five hundred free blacks in the colony. He was also one of the most prominent. Many whites called him "Jerry." Whether they meant it affectionately is doubtful. Jeremiah had a successful fishing business and also earned money as a harbor pilot, guiding ships through the treacherous sandbars at its entrance. His net worth of over £1000, more than $200,000 in today's money, meant he was a wealthy man, perhaps the wealthiest black in the colony. 

On the basis of the testimony of two slaves he had allegedly tried to recruit, the authorities charged Jeremiah with plotting a slave uprising to benefit the British. He was tried under the Negro Act of 1740, which the colonial assembly had passed after a slave revolt in 1739, the Stono Rebellion. Under the Negro Act the accused were tried in special slave courts, which denied the accused the judicial rights of the regular courts. There was no jury, only a tribunal of five white men that functioned as prosecution, judge, and jury. In contrast to traditional English courts, the defendant was considered guilty until proven innocent. Lacking defence counsel, the accused was unlikely to prevail. Jeremiah, of course, was not a slave and should not have been tried under the Negro Act. The evidence against him was exceedingly flimsy. The testimony of the two slaves was highly suspect, probably extracted under threat. One of them, Jemmy, was Jeremiah's brother in law. Jemmy later retracted his testimony before Anglican minister Robert Smith, future Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina.   

By then the court had found Jeremiah guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging and burning. As an act of "humanity" the court allowed that he could be hanged until death before being burnt. The new royal governor, Lord William Campbell, judged the proceedings a farce. He tried to  pardon Jeremiah, but found that he no longer had any authority in the colony. Campbell's life was threatened because he had tried to help Jeremiah. He fled South Carolina a few weeks later, effectively ending British rule. By then, the court's sentence had been carried out. 

(Image: Lord William Campbell, by Thomas Gainsborough)

On August 18, 1775,  Jeremiah was brought to the place of execution, a green across from the Sugar House, the house of correction for "unruly slaves." In front of a large crowd of whites and blacks, he was hanged and his dead body was burned to ashes. 

Jeremiah seems an unlikely person to have led a slave rebellion. He may have owned several slaves himself. His rise to wealth and prominence may have been his undoing. It was a living reproach to the white elite's claims that Africans were fit for nothing but slave labor. He had once been put in the stocks for allegedly insulting a white ship captain. His work as a ship pilot also told against him. Fearful whites pointed out that no one knew the harbor as well as he, and worried that he would guide British navy vessels into it. Jeremiah had served the city as a volunteer fireman, but even that hurt his cause. People said he knew so much about putting out fires that he was likely setting them. Among his accusers was a member of the tribunal that tried Jeremiah, the city's fire master, Daniel Cannon. 

One of the people Governor Campbell had appealed to on Jeremiah's behalf was Henry Laurens, then serving as President of the Provincial Congress. Laurens was also one of the richest men in South Carolina. He had made a vast fortune in the slave trade, and used the profits to several plantations and hundreds of slaves. 

(Image: Henry Laurens, painted by John Singleton Copley while Laurens was imprisoned in the Tower of London)

Laurens refused Campbell's appeal, claiming he was helpless to stop Jeremiah's execution. That may have been true at that point, but Laurens' private correspondence shows that he disliked Jeremiah. Laurens wrote that Jerry "is a forward fellow, puffed up by prosperity, ruined by luxury and debauchery and grown to an amazing pitch of vanity and ambition." In more colloquial terms, he was "uppity" and needed to be taught a lesson. Laurens denied that as a free man, Jeremiah should be accorded the rights of one and tried by a jury. English law was designed for whites. As an African, Laurens argued, Jerry had no claim to its benefits. The only option was to try him as a slave. 

Reflecting on Jeremiah's fate a short time later, Campbell described the event as a "judicial murder" and his executioners as "barbarians." After nearly 250 years of similar events, it is difficult to disagree. Thomas Jeremiah may have been given a "trial" but the whole proceeding was in effect, a lynching.

Further Reading: 

J. William Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty (Yale University Press, 2009)

William R. Ryan, The World of Thomas Jeremiah: Charles Town on the Eve of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2010) 

Peter McCandless, Remarkable Charlestonians in the American Revolution (Arcadia: The History Press, 2025)

Boston King: Black Loyalist, Minister, African Colonial Leader

 When the British attacked Charleston, South Carolina in the spring of 1780, thousands of enslaved Africans fled to the British lines. General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, offered them freedom as an incentive to leave their rebel masters. Among those who took up the offer was a young man named Boston King. (Image: Charleston, c. 1770)

King was born enslaved on a plantation near Charleston owned by Richard Waring, around 1760. His father, who was literate, had been born in Africa but "stolen away into slavery when he was young." King relates that Waring had been on good terms with his father and his mother, a skilled herbalist, and treated them well. Boston's experience was less fortunate.   

As a boy he trained as a house servant. When he was sixteen, Waring apprenticed him to a carpenter in a nearby settlement. His new master often beat him "without mercy." When the opportunity came, King joined the exodus of the enslaved fleeing to the British lines at Charleston. "I began to feel the happiness, of liberty, of which I knew nothing before " he later wrote. The British welcomed him, but did not always treat him well. (Image: Siege of Charleston, 1780, a somewhat fanciful depiction from 1862)

At the time, smallpox had broken out in and was spreading across South Carolina. The black runaways were highly vulnerable to this deadly, agonizing disease. Few of them had survived smallpox or had been inoculated, the two means of achieving immunity. It spread among them with terrifying rapidity. King became infected.

British authorities removed the infected blacks about a mile away from their camp to prevent their soldiers from being infected. There, most of them lay in the open without adequate food or care. 

King wrote later that he owed his survival to the kindness of a British soldier who had nursed and fed him. He was later able to do the same for his benefactor, when he was wounded in battle. Soon after, he narrowly avoided being sold into slavery by a white Loyalist officer. Captain Lewes was stealing horses from the British army and was about to switch to the rebel side. King escaped from him and alerted his British superior to Lewes' plan.

King went on to serve the British army in Carolina by carrying dispatches through enemy lines. One message he carried while stationed at Nelson's Ferry (Near Eutawville) helped save 250 soldiers from being captured by the Americans. 

He later joined the crew of a British man of war and took part in the capture of a rebel ship in Chesapeake Bay. His ship went to New York City with its prize. King decided to stay and worked at various jobs, including as a crewman on a pilot boat. The boat was captured by an American ship and King was nearly forced back into slavery.  But he escaped once again and returned to New York. 

By that time, the war was coming to a close. Thousands of  black Loyalists had converged on New York City, the last British stronghold in the former thirteen colonies. In New York, King married Violet, an enslaved woman from North Carolina who had also joined the British. But once again the threat of re-enslavement threatened him. 

Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783 stipulated (at the insistence of Henry Laurens of South Carolina) that the British return all American property to its owners, including runaway slaves. The news filled King and his acquaintances with "inexpressible anguish and terror." 

Fortunately, the British Commander in New York, Sir Guy Carleton refused to implement Article 7. He argued that the black Loyalists were no longer property but free persons. Returning them to slavery would violate Clinton's promise. Prior to the British evacuation of New York, Carleton sent them to the British territory of Nova Scotia, where many white Loyalists also took refuge. In all, the British issued certificates of freedom to more than 5000 black Loyalists. 

Boston and Violet embarked for Nova Scotia in July 1783. There they helped to establish a black Loyalist settlement called Birchtown. (King calls it Burch Town in his memoir). The settlement was named for General Samuel Birch, the British commandant in New York City who had issued certificates of freedom and overseen the evacuation of the black Loyalists. In Birchtown, King worked as a carpenter and various other jobs to support himself. (Image: Halifax, Nova Scotia, 18th century)

Methodist missionaries arrived in the area the following year. The Kings were among the first to be converted. Boston became a circuit riding preacher. Life was initially extremely hard, as in all new pioneering settlements The difficulties were increased by poor soil and a harsh climate. Tensions with white neighbors were often high as both communities competed for scarce resources and jobs. 

After a few years conditions began to improve, but in 1792 the Kings accepted an offer from the new Sierra Leone Company to emigrate to a new British colony in West Africa. They helped to recruit hundreds of other black Loyalists in Nova Scotia to join them.

The Company's backers were antislavery leaders in Britain, including Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and brothers Thomas and John Clarkson. They established the colony as a refuge for freed slaves, most of them Loyalists living in Canada and Britain. They called it the Province of Freedom. It was later renamed for the nearby Sierra Leone Mountains.  

John Clarkson led about 1100 Nova Scotia settlers, including the Kings, to the new colony. Together, they established the settlement of Freetown, now Sierra Leone's capital. Tragically, Violet died soon after their arrival, probably of yellow fever or malaria. Many other new arrivals, both white and black, also died. Few had immunities to the local fevers. [Images of Freetown, mid-19th century]

The Sierra Leone Company employed King to preach to the indigenous people. He was the first Methodist preacher to do so. That task proved immensely difficult, because he did not understand their language. He proposed to open a school. In 1794, the Company sent King to London to study at a Methodist institution, Kingswood School, near Bristol. 

At Kingswood, King trained as a missionary and teacher, returning to Sierra Leone in 1796. While at Kingswood, he wrote his autobiography, which the Methodist Magazine published in 1798. It is one of few accounts written by a black Loyalist or any Loyalist for that matter.

Meanwhile, King had remarried. He and his second wife Peggy relocated about 100 miles inland to missionize among the Sherbo people. The couple died there in 1802, probably of a fever.

Further Reading: 

Boston King, "Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, A Black Preacher," Methodist Magazine, 21, 1798. 

The Life of Boston King, Black Loyalist, Minister, and Master Carpenter, ed. by Ruth Holmes Whitehead and Carmelita A.M. Robertson, Nimbus Publishing Limited & The Nova Scotia Museum, 2003. 

Peter McCandless, Remarkable Charlestonians in the American Revolution 

Francis Barber: a Jamaican Slave who became Samuel Johnson's Heir.

Peter McCandless

1 hour ago

Samuel Johnson  (1709-1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, is best known for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and the classic biography of him by his friend James Boswell, The Life of Dr. Johnson. (Below: Portrait of Johnson by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Among Johnson's many other writings is a long essay, Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress  (1775). As the title indicates, Johnson rejects the American colonists' complaint that they were being oppressed by British taxes, which, by the way, were initiated by Parliament. Johnson argued that the Americans' claim that there should be "No Taxation without Representation" was unfounded. The colonists had voluntarily resigned the power of voting in British elections by leaving Britain, but retained "virtual representation" in Parliament, as did British people who had no right to vote. If the colonists wanted to take part in British politics, he suggested, they could move to England and buy an estate, which some, especially from the West Indies sugar colonies, did. This argument was unconvincing then and hasn't improved with time. Taxation No Tyranny has contributed to the common view of Johnson as an arch Tory. In some respects perhaps he was, but the reality is more complicated, and far more interesting. Another of Johnson's arguments is much stronger -- and it is a liberal one. It may be summed up in the line "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Here Johnson hit the colonial argument for liberty at its most vulnerable point. The colonists claimed that the British government was trying to enslave them while holding hundreds of thousands of people in the most oppressive form of bondage. 

Johnson, unlike most influential Britons in the 1770s, hated slavery. He once proposed a toast to "the next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies." He also argued that if the Africans were freed and given some land, they would likely prove better citizens than their masters. Johnson did more than talk the talk. Years before he had adopted a former Jamaican slave, Francis Barber, and educated him. Barber entered Johnson's household as a boy in 1752. Johnson's wife Elizabeth had just died, plunging Johnson into a deep depression. Barber's owner sent the ten year old Barber to serve as Johnson's valet. Barber  (1742/3-1801), originally named Quashey, was still a slave at that time, but his owner freed him two years later. After gaining his freedom, he worked for an apothecary, briefly as a sailor in the Navy, and then as Johnson's assistant. Barber married Elizabeth Ball, a white woman with whom he had two children. In his will, Johnson left Barber a substantial legacy in money along with his books and papers, and a gold watch. 

The portrait above, which some art experts attribute to Johnson's friend Joshua Reynolds, hangs in Johnson's house today. Whether it is a portrait of Barber or not is disputed. Some experts think it is a portrait of Reynolds' manservant.  Johnson's house, just off Fleet Street in Gough Square, is open to the public daily. It is well worth visiting to learn more about Johnson, his dictionary, and iinteresting household, including Francis Barber.

Further Reading: Michael Bundock, The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave who Became Samuel Johnson's Heir (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015)