John Clarkson (abolitionist) - Mission To America

Mission To America

His brother Thomas, along with William Wilberforce and other members of the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, had incorporated the Sierra Leone Company with a view to resettling certain free and formerly enslaved blacks on the west coast of Africa. Lieutenant Clarkson’s charge was to secure among black communities of Nova Scotia, Canada, volunteers to settle in the area of the mouth of the Sierra Leone River.

The blacks in Nova Scotia were chiefly former African-American slaves relocated there after the Revolutionary War known as Black Loyalists. They had escaped to the British and fought with them to secure their own freedom. The British promised resettlement, land and provisions for the first year. Despite promises from the military, the settlements were underfunded, and authorities tended to favor white Loyalists, especially those from the South who had brought slaves with them to Nova Scotia, complicating the social situation. They competed with the freedmen for land and power.

After arriving in Nova Scotia from England in October 1791, Clarkson worked with the Black Loyalist leader Thomas Peters and gathered a group of close to 1,200 African Nova Scotians who wanted to leave for better opportunities in Sierra Leone. Some wanted to return home, having been kidnapped and enslaved from Africa as children. They departed in fifteen ships for Africa late in the year, meeting terrible conditions at sea. After a harrowing transatlantic passage in winter, the flotilla of 15 ships arrived in Sierra Leone in March 1792. The Africans from Nova Scotia, who became known as the Nova Scotian Settlers, established Freetown. Clarkson remained at the settlement until returning to England at the end of December of 1792. He served as Governor from August 1792 until his departure.