The American Tradition Of Self-Deportation

When government fails to do its job, citizens step in. That spirit drove the American Revolution.

Faced with a significant portion of the population siding with the enemy, individuals, towns, and states made life untenable for between 60,000 and 100,000 people—prompting them to self-deport. That represented 2.4 to 4 percent of the colonial population, the equivalent of roughly 8.3 to 13.8 million today. With those public enemies gone, the new nation built itself. The early United States had no functioning central government and no national enforcement power. Under the Articles of Confederation, authority rested with the 13 states. States could expel undesirables, and when they didn’t, towns and ordinary citizens often did. There was no formal federal deportation process; the first such laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts, came in 1798—well after independence.

Most of those who left were not recent foreigners but long-established residents, often with deep colonial roots. They chose loyalty to a foreign power over their new republic, and communities responded by making continued residence impossible.

The original states inherited colonial practices. Newcomers arrived freely—no visas existed—but they were not free to settle wherever they wished. Colonial and later state naturalization laws required years of residence, renunciation of foreign allegiances, and oaths of citizenship. In many places, especially New England, settlers had to be accepted by a town.

Towns and states used patchwork laws to safeguard the communities they had built. Immigrants could reside without full naturalization, but without citizenship rights they could more easily be removed if they became burdens. Criminals, the politically suspect, and those deemed culturally incompatible were often turned away. While hardworking but penniless newcomers were generally welcomed—as they had been since the Mayflower—indigents, vagrants, and idlers who imposed on struggling towns were not.

New England colonies-turned-states developed formal tools like “warning out” and banishment. Massachusetts, for example, established systems early on for caring for the “deserving poor,” correcting the idle, and excluding non-residents likely to become public charges. Towns maintained almshouses for their own helpless, and workhouses for those able to labor. Under settlement laws, only recognized “inhabitants” qualified for public support. Newcomers could gain settlement rights after a period of residence, often months to a year, but towns actively screened arrivals.

Selectmen identified potential burdens—paupers, idlers, criminals, or those “of evil fame”—and issued formal written warnings ordering them to leave. This created a public record protecting the town from future welfare claims. Enforcement varied: some complied and left, others were escorted out, and the most recalcitrant faced whipping before expulsion. Boston, a major port, warned out thousands in the decades before the Revolution. Banishment offered a broader remedy, allowing states to remove undesirables to other colonies or jurisdictions and sparing the cost of long-term imprisonment.

During the Revolution, states enacted emergency laws against those aiding the enemy. Massachusetts’ 1777 “Act for taking up and restraining Persons dangerous to this State” (note: it was not “the State”), and its 1781 renewal, allowed confinement or deportation of suspected spies and loyalists. The 1778 Banishment Act named hundreds of individuals, particularly those who had joined the enemy, as perpetual exiles; returning was punishable by death. Similar measures appeared in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas. Property confiscation stripped traitors of land, homes, and assets, often destroying their ability to remain.

When officials failed to act, citizens acted directly. The idiom “run out of town on a rail” comes from this era. Back then it was called “riding the rail.” Groups of townsmen, acting either in orderly fashion or as mobs, would sometimes strip an undesirable of his clothes, force him to straddle a rough split fence rail, lift both ends of the rail onto their shoulders, parade him through town amid jeers, and dump him beyond the town line or in a river. They warned the rail-rider never to return. In harsher cases, tar and feathering preceded the ride. These practices persisted into the 19th century on the frontier, later immortalized by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Social pressure, ostracism, vandalism, and the threat of violence made life unbearable for many royalists during the American Revolution. Loyalty oaths, confinement orders, and public shaming added to the squeeze. For those who stayed, economic ruin often followed. Self-deportation became the practical choice.

Many fled to British-held areas like occupied New York or Detroit. Others sailed to Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec), the West Indies, or Britain itself. British forces conducted large-scale evacuations: from Boston in 1776, Charleston in 1782, and New York in 1783 (nearly 27,000 from New York City alone). Records show the process was as orderly as wartime conditions allowed.

Not everyone left permanently. Some passive loyalists with family ties or useful skills later reintegrated after states lifted penalties, often upon petition. Pragmatism prevailed in many communities.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington warned against foreign influence and the dangers of divided loyalties, the latter still America’s greatest internal threat. Had citizens, towns, and states not driven self-deportation during the founding era, the republic’s future might have looked very different. The lesson remains: when government falters, an engaged people can still secure their communities and preserve their character.