New York had been Britain's principal stronghold in North America since 1776, and remained in British hands for the entire war after that first year, longer than any other American city. Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris required British forces to leave "without causing any Destruction, or carrying away any Negroes, or other Property of the American Inhabitants." Long before the final evacuation, it became clear that article would not be honored the way Washington believed it should be. The dispute that followed, conducted face to face at a meeting in Orange Town and in letters that followed, survives complete at Founders Online.
Washington and British commander Sir Guy Carleton met in person that May to work out the practical terms of the coming evacuation. Washington raised the treaty's promise directly, and the minutes of the conversation, kept and preserved as an official record, capture both men's positions in close to their own words.
General Washington thereupon expressed his Surprize that after what appeared to him an express Stipulation to the Contrary in the Treaty. He principally insisted that he conceived it could not have been the Intention of the British Government by the Treaty of Peace to reduce themselves to the Necessity of violating their Faith to the Negroes who came into the British Lines under the Proclamation of his Predecessors in Command, that delivering up the Negroes to their former Masters would be delivering them up some possibly to Execution and others to severe Punishment, which in his Opinion would be a dishonorable Violation.
Carleton did not deny what was happening. He offered a different justification for it entirely, one built on a narrower reading of the treaty's wording and a practical argument about what would happen if he tried to stop it.
Sir Guy Carleton then observed that he was by the treaty held to any Property but was only restricted from carrying it away. If the Negroes were left to themselves without Care or Control from him, Numbers of them would very probably go off and not return to the parts of the Country they came from, or clandestinely get on board the Transports in Manner which it would not be in his Power to prevent, in either of which Cases an inevitable Loss would ensue to the Proprietors, but as the Business was now conducted they had at least a Chance for Compensation.
Carleton followed up in writing days later, explaining the record-keeping system his officers had put in place: a formal registry, recording each departing person's name, age, description, former enslaver, and claimed status, compiled specifically so that any dispute over compensation could be settled afterward rather than blocking anyone's departure in the moment. That registry became known to history as the Book of Negroes.
The Negroes in question, I have already said, I found free when I arrived at New York. I had therefore no right, as I thought, to prevent their going to any part of the world they thought proper. I must confess that the mere supposition, that the King's Minister could deliberately stipulate in a treaty an engagement to be guilty of a notorious breach of the public faith towards people of any complection, seems to denote a less friendly disposition than I had reason to expect.
By mid-November, Carleton was working out the last logistics of departure, requesting continued use of the city's shipyard and a Long Island brewery and bakehouse for his remaining sick and wounded until the last transports could sail. His November 19 letter also passed along an unsettling intelligence report: an informant had warned that a group intended to plunder the city and attack remaining Loyalists the moment British troops withdrew, a fear serious enough that Carleton recommended the suspect be turned over to Washington's forces directly upon their entry into the city.
Carleton withdrew his forces to Staten Island on November 25, 1783, completing the evacuation of New York City. The last British transports and warships put to sea a little over a week later, on December 4, marking the final physical departure of British military power from the United States.
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