Rogue History

- Thomas Peters was embarking on a dangerous voyage but by the time the ship left Nova Scotia in the summer of 1790, he had already endured slavery, escaped his chains and served bravely with the British army.

This was not a man who shrank from danger.

Now, he was on his way to challenge the British government directly on the promises it had broken.

His courage would soon make him the father of a nation.

I'm Joel Cook and this is "Rogue History."

(triumphant upbeat music) "Rebels and Revolutionaries."

Thomas's story began in present day Nigeria, where he was born an Egba prince in 1738.

Though the details of his life in his homeland aren't well known, he was likely educated and influential.

But unfortunately for Thomas, slave traders didn't really care.

He was kidnapped, forced onto a ship and sold away to French Louisiana at age 22.

Now, as you might imagine, a prince didn't take too kindly to being sold halfway around the planet to harvest sugarcane.

His first escape attempt resulted in a severe whipping which probably isn't the best way to convince someone they should stay.

After a second attempt, he was branded.

And after the third, putting heavy shackles that prevented him from moving easily around the plantation.

But Thomas remained unbroken and it seems that his enslavers knew it.

A few years after his enslavement in Louisiana, he was sold to William Campbell of Wilmington, North Carolina, where he shifted from the brutal work of the sugarcane fields to life as an enslaved millwright.

The work required him to repair and construct the mills that powered industry in and around Wilmington.

By the summer of 1775, slave holders up and down the Atlantic Coast panicked as rumors spread that the British were encouraging enslaved people to rebel against their oppressors.

And honestly, it wasn't a rumor.

Though the British still held millions of enslaved people within their empire, they recognized how important slavery was to the survival of the American independence movement.

If they could break the system, they could win the war.

The Wilmington Committee of Safety responded to this threat by banning the import of new enslaved people, disarming every Black person in the city and even declaring martial law but none of this deterred Thomas.

In November 1775, the British Royal Governor of Virginia issued the Dunmore proclamation which guaranteed freedom to any enslaved person willing to fight against their patriot enslavers.

Thomas finally had the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

He just needed a chance to act on it.

That moment came a few months later when British warships attacked Wilmington.

While no one knows for certain how Thomas and his family escaped, it's likely that they and other freedom seekers stole boats and rode out to the safety of the British fleet.

By the next fall, Thomas, his wife Sally, and their children were safe in New York but not yet free.

Though the terms were a little better, the British still wanted to use Black labor just as much as the Americans did.

Thomas enlisted in the Black Pioneers and Guides, a unit that provided scouts, raiders, and construction laborers to the British Army.

The soldiers received the same rations and pay as their British counterparts but weren't trained in military combat despite often being in the line of fire.

Even worse, the Americans made it their mission to terrorize Black soldiers.

When a British unit was ambushed in South Carolina, the Americans put a Black Pioneer's head on a stake as a warning.

But despite all of these risks, Thomas thrived as a Black Pioneer.

He was wounded twice by the Americans but his willpower and natural leadership skills pushed him up the ranks to become one of three Black sergeants in the unit by the end of the war.

As we all know, the British lost in the end but still honored their promise to liberate the thousands of Black people who supported them.

In November 1783, Thomas and his family joined a massive evacuation of 3,000 Black Loyalists bound for British-ruled Nova Scotia.

Now, I know, this is the part of the story where you're expecting me to tell you that the Prince who survived slavery saved his family from it, fought in a war and escaped to the Great White North, and lived happily ever after, but he didn't, and it was all because of fake friends.

The most important part of starting a new life in Nova Scotia was land ownership.

British royal policy promised former Loyalists 200 acres if they were a non-commissioned officer, 100 if they were regular soldiers or civilian heads of family, and 50 for each additional family member.

For Thomas, his wife and their two children, that meant they should have received 300 acres of land to start their new life on but they didn't receive any and neither did many other Black Loyalists.

When they did receive land, it was often bad for farming and difficult to build on.

After a famine set in, people in Black settlements were forced to trade the clothes off their backs for food and many still starved in the streets.

Others survived by agreeing to indentured servitude contracts with white Loyalists that were barely better than the slavery they escaped.

In fact, many white Loyalists turned a tidy profit by selling these indentured servants to ships or body snatchers looking to re-enslave them in the US or Caribbean.

Things got so bad that some Black Loyalists fled back to the northern US, straight up enemy territory, to find safety from their former comrades, but Thomas didn't.

To no one's surprise, he immediately stepped up as a leader of the movement for Black Loyalist rights.

He went first to Governor John Parr, the governor of Nova Scotia in 1784, with a petition to finally grant Black Loyalists the lands they were owed.

It didn't go over well.

After repeated attempts to change Parr's mind over the next few years, Thomas traveled to New Brunswick in 1790 to petition its governor with the same request.

The governor wax poetic about treating Black people and white people the same in his province.

But when Thomas asked about quality land, he had to admit the crown had reserved it for white Loyalists.

Seven years after being promised a new life in Nova Scotia, Black Loyalists were slowly watching it wither away.

It was time to escalate the situation.

In the fall of 1790, Thomas Peters was selected by community members to deliver a petition to British foreign minister, William Grenville on behalf of over 200 Black Loyalist families.

And by deliver, I do mean deliver.

Petitioners didn't have change.org back in the day, Thomas would have to sail from Nova Scotia to London on board a ship where he could easily be re-enslaved, if he even survived the trip.

He, a formerly enslaved millwright, was expected to walk into the offices of the most powerful empire in the world and hold them accountable for their failure to keep their word.

And of course, that's exactly what he did.

Thomas's arrival in 1790 couldn't have been better timed.

Almost two decades prior, abolitionists successfully banned slavery in England.

Now, parliament was considering legislation to ban slavery completely throughout the British colonies.

Thomas's life experience meshed perfectly with the movement's central points and it also helped that our guy came with some serious references, a letter of introduction from none other than major general Henry Clinton, who described Thomas as a very active sergeant in a very useful corps.

Between his meetings with the abolitionists and British officials, Thomas heard about an opportunity that just might work for his friends and family back home.

The end of slavery in England left thousands of formerly enslaved people in much the same conditions as Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia.

To solve this problem, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor headed by famed abolitionists, Granville Sharp, suggested the voluntary relocation of poor Black people to Sierra Leone in West Africa and the bill approving the Sierra Leone colony passed in 1791 while Thomas Peters was in London.

Now, of course, there were problems with this whole Sierra Leone situation, most obvious among them that Sierra Leone wasn't empty.

There were thousands of native Africans living in the area who had no say in the formation of the colony.

But for Thomas, who had seen his people terrorized for nearly a decade in their own promised land, there didn't seem to be a better option.

In 1791, he sailed back to Nova Scotia, alongside abolitionist John Clarkson to recruit Black Loyalists for the colony.

Now, white Loyalists took that as a threat and Governor Parr, the same governor who denied the land petition in 1784, was furious with Thomas for exposing his failures as a leader.

Local officials and white citizens, who had once attacked Black residents for accepting low-wage labor, now physically attacked Thomas for taking that labor away.

They also refused to settle debts or end indentured servant contracts for those who wanted to leave.

Despite these difficulties, Thomas successfully signed up 1,200 Black Loyalists which represent the overwhelming majority of the ones who had a choice, according to Black Loyalist scholar Dr.

James W. St.

George Walker.

But his work wasn't done yet.

Thomas and John Clarkson worked together to inspect the 15 ships.

They ordered new beds constructed, ventilation improved and decks removed.

By doing so, Thomas was ensuring that none of his followers, many of whom had experienced the horror of the Middle Passage, would've to feel that discomfort on this voyage.

The fleet departed on January 15, 1792, arriving in Sierra Leone two months later.

After settling in, Thomas wrote his first report back to the British in which he thanked them for their kindness, described how nice the weather and the sailors were, and then told them that their provisions were trash.

He expected better for his people while they started the process of growing their own food but the issues in the colony weren't just about provisions.

John Clarkson and the other abolitionists describe Sierra Leone as a place that would provide land for building a new life and a democratic colorblind society that respected Black voices.

But when they finally arrived in the colony, Thomas often argued with Clarkson over leadership decisions.

When Black residents voted Thomas into a leadership position, Clarkson accused Thomas of making trouble and charged him with theft in a politically motivated legal trial.

The voyage and the difficulty of new life in Sierra Leone seemed to take a toll on Thomas.

He began showing signs of illness on June 16, 1792, just after the trial, and died a few days later at just 54 years old.

Though Thomas Peters never got to see it, Sierra Leone preserved his legacy.

He remains the father of the nation of Sierra Leone and his statue stands near his grave site in Freetown today.

For people like Thomas Peters, the American Revolution wasn't the independence movement we celebrate today.

While his enslavers preached a fight from liberty at their tables, their hypocrisy forced him to pick up arms against the revolution.

Thomas's story reminds us that while the American Revolution is called to fight for freedom, that included the freedom to own human beings.

For Black Americans who remained in the US, their revolution would continue for years to come.

(bright quirky music)