PETERS, THOMAS
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Thomas Peters (circa 1738-June 25/26, 1792) was a courageous Afro-American slave who escaped from his master and eventually became the leader of the black emigrants from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone.
PHOTO CAPTION: Peters Thomas. SOURCE: EA Library.
He was of African descent and worked as a millwright in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1776, during the War of American Independence, he ran away and joined the British army, becoming a sergeant in the Black Pioneers. At the end of the war, he and many of his fellow Loyalists were taken to Nova Scotia where the British government promised them land. But when it was apportioned the white Loyalists got priority, and the former slaves tended to be overlooked. Some were allocated remote patches of forestland, while many received nothing. Without land, they feared they would relapse into their former state of slavery. Peters waited vainly at Annapolis, Nova Scotia, where he had arrived in 1784, without getting his land.
Finally, realising that the Nova Scotian government would take no action, he determined to go to England to complain to the British government. This required immense courage. Poor, barely literate, and without influence, by venturing on board ship he was risking recapture as a slave, should some unscrupulous captain choose to take him to an American port. He also risked reprisals from the Nova Scotian government.
Nevertheless, he made the voyage to London in 1791, where he made contact with the directors of the Sierra Leone Company who were seeking settlers for Sierra Leone. With their promises of a new home in Africa for him and his people, he returned to Nova Scotia to recruit emigrants.
Peters assumed that the directors were going to put him in charge of the scheme. Instead they sent a British naval officer, John Clarkson, to superintend the embarkation and voyage. This disappointment embittered Peters, and he decided not to co-operate with Clarkson. He sailed for Sierra Leone in one of the emigrant ships in January 1792, with his wife Sally and their children. On landing he sent an official letter to the secretary of state in London, reporting the arrival of the settlers. But he was again rebuffed, and Clarkson was given charge of the settlement.
In Nova Scotia, Peters had been the people’s representative and spokesman. In Sierra Leone, Clarkson, realising he was a potential enemy, subtly undermined his influence by winning their affection and confidence for himself. When Peters tried to persuade them to choose him as their official leader, Clarkson summoned the settlers, denounced Peters as a mutineer, and by a passionate, emotional speech won over his audience. When eventually Peters called for a showdown, asking them to choose unequivocally between himself and Clarkson, no one supported him. Sick at heart, Peters fell ill with the malaria that was decimating the settlement in its first months, and on the night of June 25-26, 1792, he died.
Peters, tragedy had a curious sequel. Would-be historians in the 20th century prolonged his life and invented an imaginary career for him, so that even quite reputable books still repeat fantasies about his becoming a member of the Sierra Leone Legislative Council which was inaugurated in 1863, 72 years after his death.
Nevertheless, Peters’ part in the history of Sierra Leone is an important one. Without his initiative, the Nova Scotian settlers would never have left Nova Scotia, and without them, the Sierra Leone settlement would have failed.
CHRISTOPHER FYFE
