excepted Charles Town, South Carolina, and had the highest proportion of Africans to Europeans of any settlement in the Northern colonies. Post-Revolutionary War During the Revolutionary War, the British occupied New York City in the summer of 1776 and they maintained control of the city until the Peace of Paris was signed and they departed on November 25, 1783, a date which came to be known as Evacuation Day. As in the rest of the Thirteen Colonies, the Crown had offered freedom to enslaved peoples who escaped from their Patriot masters and fled to British lines. 3,000 of these individuals were eventually listed in the Book of Negroes. This promise of freedom attracted thousands of slaves to the city who had escaped to British lines. In 1781 the New York legislature offered a financial incentive to Loyalist slaveowners who assigned their slaves to military service, and promised freedom at the war's end for the slaves. By 1780 the African-American community swelled to about 10,000 in New York City, which became the center of free blacks in North America. Among those who escaped to New York were Deborah Squash and her husband Harvey, who fled from George Washington's plantation in Virginia. After the end of the war, according to provisions concerning property in the Treaty of Paris, the Americans demanded the return of all former slaves who had escaped to British lines. The British steadfastly refused the American request and evacuated 3,000 freedmen with their troops in 1783 for resettlement in Nova Scotia, other British colonies, and England. Instead of returning the slaves which had been promised their freedom, the British came to an agreement with the Americans to financially recompensate them for each slave lost. Other freedmen scattered from the city to evade slave catchers. Aided by individual manumissions after war's end, by 1790 about one-third of the blacks in the city were free. The total city population was 33,131, according to the first national census. In 1799 the state legislature passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery with little opposition. Similar to Pennsylvania's law, it provided for gradual manumission of slaves. Children born to slave mothers after July 4, 1799, were considered legally free, but had to serve as indentured servants to their mother's master, until age 28 for men and 25 for women, before gaining social freedom. Until reaching age 21, they were considered the property