Concept

Emigration from the United States

Summary
Emigration from the United States is the process where citizens from the United States move to live in other countries, creating an American diaspora (overseas Americans). The process is the reverse of the immigration to the United States. The United States does not keep track of emigration, and counts of Americans abroad are thus only available based on statistics kept by the destination countries. Due to the flow of people back and forth between the United Kingdom and its colonies, as well as between the colonies, there has been an American diaspora of a sort since before the United States was founded. During and immediately after the American Revolutionary War, a number of American Loyalists relocated to other countries, chiefly Canada and the United Kingdom. Residence in countries outside the British Empire was unusual, and usually limited to the wealthy, such as Benjamin Franklin, who was able to self-finance his trip to Paris as a U.S. diplomat. After the American Revolutionary War, some 3,000 Black Loyalists - men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom - were evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia; they were individually listed in the Book of Negroes as the British gave them certificates of freedom and arranged for their transportation. The Crown gave them land grants and supplies to help them resettle in Nova Scotia. Other Black Loyalists were evacuated to London or the Caribbean colonies. Thousands of slaves escaped from plantations and fled to British lines, especially after British occupation of Charleston, South Carolina. When the British evacuated, they took many former slaves with them. Many ended up among London's Black Poor, with 400 resettled by the Sierra Leone Company to Freetown in Africa in 1787. Five years later, another 1,192 Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia chose to emigrate to Sierra Leone, becoming known as the Nova Scotian settlers in the new British colony of Sierra Leone.
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