 This was probably Campbell, an immigrant Scotsman, who had settled on the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina.In 1776, Peters escaped from his master's flour mill near Wilmington at the start of the American Revolutionary War and migrated to New York, where he joined the Black Pioneers, a Black Loyalist unit made up of refugee African-American slaves.The British had previously promised freedom to slaves of rebels in exchange for supporting the war effort against the colonies that formed the new United States.