Loyalists flee

After the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, between 60,000 and 80,000 Loyalists left the United States in the largest forced migration in American history to that time. Many former Loyalists relocated to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario, while about 3,000 Black Loyalists departed under British protection after having accepted wartime offers of freedom. Article V of the Treaty of Paris asked Congress to recommend restoration of confiscated Loyalist property, but most state governments ignored that promise and continued seizing estates.

The exodus revealed how incomplete political reconciliation remained after independence had been won. American states preferred punishment, confiscation, and exclusion, while Great Britain treated the failure to honor Article V as proof that the United States could not yet enforce treaty obligations on its own citizens. The departure also stripped many American towns of merchants, lawyers, clergy, and landowners who had formed a significant part of the colonial professional class.

British complaints over confiscated property became one justification for retaining frontier posts in the Northwest Territory despite the Treaty of Paris. The migration also reshaped British Canada, where incoming Loyalists transformed the population and political development of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper Canada.