During the American Revolution, thousands of enslaved people in the colonies fled to British Forces, to seek shelter or to volunteer for their war effort. At the end of the war, the Americans demanded that these people be returned to their masters, but the British broke the treaty and evacuated them from New York instead.
This map shows where some of the evacuated people escaped from, as recorded by British and American officials in 1783.
The map shows the borders of the United States as determined by the Treaty of Paris, 1783. Modern state borders are shown as grey dotted lines.
Map © Joseph Dragovich 2020, all rights reserved
Data for this map is available free from the Book of Negroes Data Project