ABSTRACT
Following the War of Independence (1775–83) hundreds of black Americans who had been promised liberty in return for supporting the Loyalist cause fled to London. Many ended up starving or freezing to death on the city’s streets. Their plight attracted widespread public sympathy, with members of all social classes taking it upon themselves to donate money for food and relief. After much consideration the philanthropists and abolitionist Evangelicals who sat on the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor decided that the best long-term solution was to offer them assisted passages to Sierra Leone. The venture was not a success: the blacks arrived at the start of the rainy season in 1787; about a third died, and the rest quarrelled with their African neighbours, who burned down their settlement.
