recapture their former slaves. Some would capture any Black, including those born free before the war, and sell them into slavery. The U.S. Congress ordered George Washington to retrieve any American property, including slaves, from the British, as stipulated by the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Since Sir Guy Carleton intended to honor the promise of freedom, the British proposed a compromise that would compensate slave owners and provide certificates of freedom and the right to be evacuated to one of the British colonies to any Black person who could prove his service or status. The British transported more than 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia, the greatest number of people of African descent to arrive there at any one time. One of their settlements, Birchtown, Nova Scotia was the largest free African community in North America for the first few years of its existence. Black Loyalists found the northern climate and frontier conditions in Nova Scotia difficult and were subject to discrimination by other Loyalist settlers, many of them slaveholders. In July 1784, Black Loyalists in Shelburne were targeted in the Shelburne Riots, the first recorded race riots in Canadian history. Crown officials granted land to the Black Loyalists of lesser quality and that were more rocky and less fertile than that given to White Loyalists. In 1792, the British government offered Black Loyalists the chance to resettle in a new colony in Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Company was established to manage its development. Half of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, nearly 1200, departed the country and moved permanently to Sierra Leone. They set up the community of "Freetown". In 1793, the British transported another 3,000 Blacks to Florida, Nova Scotia and England as free men and women. Their names were recorded in the Book of Negroes by Sir Carleton. Approximately 300 free Black people in Savannah refused to evacuate at the end of the war, fearing they would be re-enslaved once they arrived in the West Indies. They established an independent colony in swamps near Savannah River, though by 1786 most of them were discovered and returned to slavery, as Southern planters ignored the fact that they had been freed by the British during the war. When the British ceded the colonies of East Florida and West Florida back to Spain per the terms of the Treaty of Paris, hundreds of free Black people which had