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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The United Empire Loyalists, by W.
-Stewart Wallace
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The United Empire Loyalists
- A Chronicle of the Great Migration
-
-Author: W. Stewart Wallace
-
-Release Date: February 7, 2022 [eBook #67356]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Marcia Brooks, Iona Vaughan, James Wright and the Online
- Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNITED EMPIRE
-LOYALISTS ***
-
-
-
-
-
-
- _CHRONICLES OF CANADA_
- Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
- In thirty-two volumes
-
- 13
-
- THE UNITED EMPIRE
- LOYALISTS
-
- BY W. STEWART WALLACE
-
- _Part IV_
- _The Beginnings of British Canada_
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: GEORGE III
-
-From the National Portrait Gallery]
-
-
-
-
- THE
- UNITED EMPIRE
- LOYALISTS
-
- A Chronicle of the Great Migration
-
- BY
- W. STEWART WALLACE
-
- [Illustration]
-
- TORONTO
- GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
- 1920
-
- _Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
- the Berne Convention_
-
- PRESS OF THE HUNTER-ROSE CO., LIMITED, TORONTO
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- Page
-
- I. INTRODUCTORY 1
-
- II. LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 7
-
- III. PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS 20
-
- IV. THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS 32
-
- V. PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR 45
-
- VI. THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA 53
-
- VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK 71
-
- VIII. IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND 86
-
- IX. THE LOYALISTS IN QUEBEC 91
-
- X. THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS 97
-
- XI. COMPENSATION AND HONOUR 112
-
- XII. THE AMERICAN MIGRATION 120
-
- XIII. THE LOYALIST IN HIS NEW HOME 127
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 138
-
- INDEX 143
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
- GEORGE III _Frontispiece_
- From the National Portrait Gallery.
-
- LORD CORNWALLIS _Facing page_ 46
- From the National Portrait Gallery.
-
- UPPER AND LOWER CANADA AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES AT
- THE TIME OF THE LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS ” 52
- Map by Bartholomew.
-
- THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON—BUILT 1787 ” 80
-
- FACSIMILE OF CARD USED IN THE FIRST NEW BRUNSWICK
- ELECTION, 1785 ” 82
-
- SIR FREDERICK HALDIMAND ” 98
- After a contemporary painting.
-
- JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE ” 122
- From the bust in Exeter Cathedral.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-INTRODUCTORY
-
-
-The United Empire Loyalists have suffered a strange fate at the hands of
-historians. It is not too much to say that for nearly a century their
-history was written by their enemies. English writers, for obvious
-reasons, took little pleasure in dwelling on the American Revolution, and
-most of the early accounts were therefore American in their origin. Any
-one who takes the trouble to read these early accounts will be struck by
-the amazing manner in which the Loyalists are treated. They are either
-ignored entirely or else they are painted in the blackest colours.
-
- So vile a crew the world ne’er saw before,
- And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more!
- If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air,
- Those ghosts have entered these base bodies here.
- Murder and blood is still their dear delight.
-
-So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he
-voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians of the
-first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively
-insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American
-colonies were all but unanimous in their armed opposition to the British
-government.
-
-Within recent years, however, there has been a change. American
-historians of a new school have revised the history of the Revolution,
-and a tardy reparation has been made to the memory of the Tories of
-that day. Tyler, Van Tyne, Flick, and other writers have all made the
-_amende honorable_ on behalf of their countrymen. Indeed, some of these
-writers, in their anxiety to stand straight, have leaned backwards; and
-by no one perhaps will the ultra-Tory view of the Revolution be found
-so clearly expressed as by them. At the same time the history of the
-Revolution has been rewritten by some English historians; and we have a
-writer like Lecky declaring that the American Revolution ‘was the work
-of an energetic minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and
-fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little love, and
-leading them step by step to a position from which it was impossible to
-recede.’
-
-Thus, in the United States and in England, the pendulum has swung from
-one extreme to the other. In Canada it has remained stationary. There,
-in the country where they settled, the United Empire Loyalists are still
-regarded with an uncritical veneration which has in it something of the
-spirit of primitive ancestor-worship. The interest which Canadians have
-taken in the Loyalists has been either patriotic or genealogical; and
-few attempts have been made to tell their story in the cold light of
-impartial history, or to estimate the results which have flowed from
-their migration. Yet such an attempt is worth while making—an attempt to
-do the United Empire Loyalists the honour of painting them as they were,
-and of describing the profound and far-reaching influences which they
-exerted on the history of both Canada and the United States.
-
-In the history of the United States the exodus of the Loyalists is an
-event comparable only to the expulsion of the Huguenots from France
-after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Loyalists, whatever
-their social status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented
-the conservative and moderate element in the revolting states; and
-their removal, whether by banishment or disfranchisement, meant the
-elimination of a very wholesome element in the body politic. To this
-were due in part no doubt many of the early errors of the republic in
-finance, diplomacy, and politics. At the same time it was a circumstance
-which must have hastened by many years the triumph of democracy. In the
-tenure of land, for example, the emigration produced a revolution. The
-confiscated estates of the great Tory landowners were in most cases cut
-up into small lots and sold to the common people; and thus the process
-of levelling and making more democratic the whole social structure was
-accelerated.
-
-On the Canadian body politic the impress of the Loyalist migration is so
-deep that it would be difficult to overestimate it. It is no exaggeration
-to say that the United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current
-of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers saw no future
-before Canada but that of a French colony under the British crown.
-‘Barring a catastrophe shocking to think of,’ wrote Sir Guy Carleton in
-1767, ‘this country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the Canadian
-race, who have already taken such firm root, and got to so great a
-height, that any new stock transplanted will be totally hid, except in
-the towns of Quebec and Montreal.’ Just how discerning this prophecy was
-may be judged from the fact that even to-day it holds true with regard to
-the districts that were settled at the time it was written. What rendered
-it void was the unexpected influx of the refugees of the Revolution.
-The effect of this immigration was to create two new English-speaking
-provinces, New Brunswick and Upper Canada, and to strengthen the English
-element in two other provinces, Lower Canada and Nova Scotia, so that
-ultimately the French population in Canada was outnumbered by the
-English population surrounding it. Nor should the character of this
-English immigration escape notice. It was not only English; but it was
-also filled with a passionate loyalty to the British crown. This fact
-serves to explain a great deal in later Canadian history. Before 1783
-the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was by no means assured:
-after 1783 the Imperial tie was well-knit.
-
-Nor can there be any doubt that the coming of the Loyalists hastened
-the advent of free institutions. It was the settlement of Upper Canada
-that rendered the Quebec Act of 1774 obsolete, and made necessary the
-Constitutional Act of 1791, which granted to the Canadas representative
-assemblies. The Loyalists were Tories and Imperialists; but, in the
-colonies from which they came, they had been accustomed to a very
-advanced type of democratic government, and it was not to be expected
-that they would quietly reconcile themselves in their new home to the
-arbitrary system of the Quebec Act. The French Canadians, on the other
-hand, had not been accustomed to representative institutions, and did
-not desire them. But when Upper Canada was granted an assembly, it was
-impossible not to grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and so Canada
-was started on that road of constitutional development which has brought
-her to her present position as a self-governing unit in the British
-Empire.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
-
-
-It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution was merely a
-phase of English party politics in the eighteenth century. In this view
-there is undoubtedly an element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle
-within the British Empire, in which were aligned on one side the American
-Whigs supported by the English Whigs, and on the other side the English
-Tories supported by the American Tories. The leaders of the Whig party
-in England, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Colonel Barré, the great
-Chatham himself, all championed the cause of the American revolutionists
-in the English parliament. There were many cases of Whig officers in the
-English army who refused to serve against the rebels in America. General
-Richard Montgomery, who led the revolutionists in their attack on Quebec
-in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English officer who, having resigned
-his commission, came to America and, on the outbreak of the rebellion,
-took service in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were thousands
-of American Tories who took service under the king’s banner; and some of
-the severest defeats which the rebel forces suffered were encountered at
-their hands.
-
-It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely the parties in
-England with the parties in America. The old Tory party in England was
-very different from the so-called Tory party in America. The term Tory
-in America was, as a matter of fact, an epithet of derision applied
-by the revolutionists to all who opposed them. The opponents of the
-revolutionists called themselves not Tories, but Loyalists or ‘friends of
-government.’
-
-There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a few who held language
-that smacked of Toryism. Among the Loyalist pamphleteers there were those
-who preached the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. Thus
-the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a clergyman of Virginia, wrote:
-
- Having then, my brethren, thus long been tossed to and fro in
- a wearisome circle of uncertain traditions, or in speculations
- and projects still more uncertain, concerning government, what
- better can you do than, following the apostle’s advice, ‘to
- submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s
- sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors,
- as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of
- evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well? For, so is
- the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the
- ignorance of foolish men; as free, and not using your liberty
- for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God. Honour
- all men: love the brotherhood: fear God: honour the king.’
-
-Jonathan Boucher subscribed to the doctrine of the divine right of kings:
-
- Copying after the fair model of heaven itself, wherein there
- was government even among the angels, the families of the earth
- were subjected to rulers, at first set over them by God. ‘For
- there is no power, but of God: the powers that be are ordained
- of God.’ The first father was the first king.... Hence it is,
- that our church, in perfect conformity with the doctrine here
- inculcated, in her explication of the fifth commandment, from
- the obedience due to parents, wisely derives the congenial duty
- of ‘honouring the king, and all that are put in authority under
- him.’
-
-Dr Myles Cooper, the president of King’s College, took up similar ground.
-God, he said, established the laws of government, ordained the British
-power, and commanded all to obey authority. ‘The laws of heaven and
-earth’ forbade rebellion. To threaten open disrespect of government was
-‘an unpardonable crime.’ ‘The principles of submission and obedience to
-lawful authority’ were religious duties.
-
-But even Jonathan Boucher and Myles Cooper did not apply these doctrines
-without reserve. They both upheld the sacred right of petition and
-remonstrance. ‘It is your duty,’ wrote Boucher, ‘to instruct your members
-to take all the constitutional means in their power to obtain redress.’
-Both he and Cooper deplored the policy of the British ministry. Cooper
-declared the Stamp Act to be contrary to American rights; he approved
-of the opposition to the duties on the enumerated articles; and he was
-inclined to think the duty on tea ‘dangerous to constitutional liberty.’
-
-It may be confidently asserted that the great majority of the American
-Loyalists, in fact, did not approve of the course pursued by the British
-government between 1765 and 1774. They did not deny its legality;
-but they doubted as a rule either its wisdom or its justice. Thomas
-Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, one of the most famous and
-most hated of the Loyalists, went to England, if we are to believe his
-private letters, with the secret ambition of obtaining the repeal of the
-act which closed Boston harbour. Joseph Galloway, another of the Loyalist
-leaders, and the author of the last serious attempt at conciliation,
-actually sat in the first Continental Congress, which was called with
-the object of obtaining the redress of what Galloway himself described
-as ‘the grievances justly complained of.’ Still more instructive is the
-case of Daniel Dulany of Maryland. Dulany, one of the most distinguished
-lawyers of his time, was after the Declaration of Independence denounced
-as a Tory; his property was confiscated, and the safety of his person
-imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the Revolution he had been found in
-the ranks of the Whig pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was
-ever made on the policy of the British government than that contained in
-his _Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British
-Colonies_. When the elder Pitt attacked the Stamp Act in the House of
-Commons in January 1766, he borrowed most of his argument from this
-pamphlet, which had appeared three months before.
-
-This difficulty which many of the Loyalists felt with regard to the
-justice of the position taken up by the British government greatly
-weakened the hands of the Loyalist party in the early stages of the
-Revolution. It was only as the Revolution gained momentum that the party
-grew in vigour and numbers. A variety of factors contributed to this
-result. In the first place there were the excesses of the revolutionary
-mob. When the mob took to sacking private houses, driving clergymen
-out of their pulpits, and tarring and feathering respectable citizens,
-there were doubtless many law-abiding people who became Tories in spite
-of themselves. Later on, the methods of the inquisitorial communities
-possibly made Tories out of some who were the victims of their
-attentions. The outbreak of armed rebellion must have shocked many into
-a reactionary attitude. It was of these that a Whig satirist wrote,
-quoting:
-
- This word, Rebellion, hath frozen them up,
- Like fish in a pond.
-
-But the event which brought the greatest reinforcement to the Loyalist
-ranks was the Declaration of Independence. Six months before the
-Declaration of Independence was passed by the Continental Congress, the
-Whig leaders had been almost unanimous in repudiating any intention of
-severing the connection between the mother country and the colonies.
-Benjamin Franklin told Lord Chatham that he had never heard in America
-one word in favour of independence ‘from any person, drunk or sober.’
-Jonathan Boucher says that Washington told him in the summer of 1775
-‘that if ever I heard of his joining in any such measures, I had his
-leave to set him down for everything wicked.’ As late as Christmas Day
-1775 the revolutionary congress of New Hampshire officially proclaimed
-their disavowal of any purpose ‘aiming at independence.’ Instances such
-as these could be reproduced indefinitely. When, therefore, the Whig
-leaders in the summer of 1776 made their right-about-face with regard
-to independence, it is not surprising that some of their followers fell
-away from them. Among these were many who were heartily opposed to the
-measures of the British government, and who had even approved of the
-policy of armed rebellion, but who could not forget that they were born
-British subjects. They drank to the toast, ‘My country, may she always be
-right; but right or wrong, my country.’
-
-Other motives influenced the growth of the Loyalist party. There
-were those who opposed the Revolution because they were dependent on
-government for their livelihood, royal office-holders and Anglican
-clergymen for instance. There were those who were Loyalists because they
-thought they had picked the winning side, such as the man who candidly
-wrote from New Brunswick in 1788, ‘I have made one great mistake in
-politics, for which reason I never intend to make so great a blunder
-again.’ Many espoused the cause because they were natives of the British
-Isles, and had not become thoroughly saturated with American ideas: of
-the claimants for compensation before the Royal Commissioners after
-the war almost two-thirds were persons who had been born in England,
-Scotland, or Ireland. In some of the colonies the struggle between Whig
-and Tory followed older party lines: this was especially true in New
-York, where the Livingston or Presbyterian party became Whig and the
-De Lancey or Episcopalian party Tory. Curiously enough the cleavage
-in many places followed religious lines. The members of the Church
-of England were in the main Loyalists; the Presbyterians were in the
-main revolutionists. The revolutionist cause was often strongest in
-those colonies, such as Connecticut, where the Church of England was
-weakest. But the division was far from being a strict one. There were
-even members of the Church of England in the Boston Tea Party; and there
-were Presbyterians among the exiles who went to Canada and Nova Scotia.
-The Revolution was not in any sense a religious war; but religious
-differences contributed to embitter the conflict, and doubtless made
-Whigs or Tories of people who had no other interest at stake.
-
-It is commonly supposed that the Loyalists drew their strength from the
-upper classes in the colonies, while the revolutionists drew theirs
-from the proletariat. There is just enough truth in this to make it
-misleading. It is true that among the official classes and the large
-landowners, among the clergymen, lawyers, and physicians, the majority
-were Loyalists; and it is true that the mob was everywhere revolutionist.
-But it cannot be said that the Revolution was in any sense a war of
-social classes. In it father was arrayed against son and brother against
-brother. Benjamin Franklin was a Whig; his son, Sir William Franklin, was
-a Tory. In the valley of the Susquehanna the Tory Colonel John Butler,
-of Butler’s Rangers, found himself confronted by his Whig cousins,
-Colonel William Butler and Colonel Zeb Butler. George Washington, Thomas
-Jefferson, John Adams, were not inferior in social status to Sir William
-Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson, and Joseph Galloway. And, on the other hand,
-there were no humbler peasants in the revolutionary ranks than some of
-the Loyalist farmers who migrated to Upper Canada in 1783. All that can
-be said is that the Loyalists were most numerous among those classes
-which had most to lose by the change, and least numerous among those
-classes which had least to lose.
-
-Much labour has been spent on the problem of the numbers of the
-Loyalists. No means of numbering political opinions was resorted to at
-the time of the Revolution, so that satisfactory statistics are not
-available. There was, moreover, throughout the contest a good deal of
-going and coming between the Whig and Tory camps, which makes an estimate
-still more difficult. ‘I have been struck,’ wrote Lorenzo Sabine, ‘in
-the course of my investigations, with the absence of fixed principles,
-not only among people in the common walks of life, but in many of the
-prominent personages of the day.’ Alexander Hamilton, for instance,
-deserted from the Tories to the Whigs; Benedict Arnold deserted from the
-Whigs to the Tories.
-
-The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they constituted an
-actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies. In 1779 they professed to
-have more troops in the field than the Continental Congress. These
-statements were no doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength
-of the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony of
-New York they may well have been in the majority. They were strong
-also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an officer of the revolutionary
-army described that colony as ‘the enemies’ country.’ ‘New York and
-Pennsylvania,’ wrote John Adams years afterwards, ‘were so nearly
-divided—if their propensity was not against us—that if New England on one
-side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have
-joined the British.’ In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority
-that in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself from the
-revolutionary movement had it not been for the surrender of Cornwallis at
-Yorktown. On the other hand, in the New England colonies the Loyalists
-were a small minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even
-there predominant only in one or two towns.
-
-There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution in
-the neighbourhood of three million people. Of these it is probable that
-at least one million were Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the
-opinion of John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment, and
-whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him to exaggerate.
-He gave it as his opinion more than once that about one-third of the
-people of the Thirteen Colonies had been opposed to the measures of the
-Revolution in all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a letter
-to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had signed the
-Declaration of Independence, and had been a member of every Continental
-Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean
-replied, ‘You say that ... about a third of the people of the colonies
-were against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could
-fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude
-you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were
-against it.’
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS
-
-
-In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing in the seclusion
-of his garden at Olney, paid his respects to the American revolutionists
-in the following lines:
-
- Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
- On t’ other side the Atlantic,
- I always held them in the right,
- But most so when most frantic.
-
- When lawless mobs insult the court,
- That man shall be my toast,
- If breaking windows be the sport,
- Who bravely breaks the most.
-
- But oh! for him my fancy culls
- The choicest flowers she bears,
- Who constitutionally pulls
- Your house about your ears.
-
-When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of information with
-regard to affairs in America were probably slight; but had he been
-writing at the seat of war he could not have touched off the treatment of
-the Loyalists by the revolutionists with more effective irony.
-
-There were two kinds of persecution to which the Loyalists were
-subjected—that which was perpetrated by ‘lawless mobs,’ and that which
-was carried out ‘constitutionally.’
-
-It was at the hands of the mob that the Loyalists first suffered
-persecution. Probably the worst of the revolutionary mobs was that which
-paraded the streets of Boston. In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act
-agitation, large crowds in Boston attacked and destroyed the magnificent
-houses of Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson. They broke down the doors
-with broadaxes, destroyed the furniture, stole the money and jewels,
-scattered the books and papers, and, having drunk the wines in the
-cellar, proceeded to the dismantling of the roof and walls. The owners of
-the houses barely escaped with their lives. In 1768 the same mob wantonly
-attacked the British troops in Boston, and so precipitated what American
-historians used to term ‘the Boston Massacre’; and in 1773 the famous
-band of ‘Boston Indians’ threw the tea into Boston harbour.
-
-In other places the excesses of the mob were nearly as great. In New York
-they were active in destroying printing-presses from which had issued
-Tory pamphlets, in breaking windows of private houses, in stealing live
-stock and personal effects, and in destroying property. A favourite
-pastime was tarring and feathering ‘obnoxious Tories.’ This consisted in
-stripping the victim naked, smearing him with a coat of tar and feathers,
-and parading him about the streets in a cart for the contemplation of
-his neighbours. Another amusement was making Tories ride the rail. This
-consisted in putting the ‘unhappy victims upon sharp rails with one leg
-on each side; each rail was carried upon the shoulders of two tall men,
-with a man on each side to keep the poor wretch straight and fixed in his
-seat.’
-
-Even clergymen were not free from the attentions of the mob. The Rev.
-Jonathan Boucher tells us that he was compelled to preach with loaded
-pistols placed on the pulpit cushions beside him. On one occasion he
-was prevented from entering the pulpit by two hundred armed men, whose
-leader warned him not to attempt to preach. ‘I returned for answer,’ says
-Boucher, ‘that there was but one way by which they could keep me out
-of it, and that was by taking away my life. At the proper time, with
-my sermon in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other, like Nehemiah I
-prepared to ascend my pulpit, when one of my friends, Mr David Crauford,
-having got behind me, threw his arms round me and held me fast. He
-assured me that he had heard the most positive orders given to twenty
-men picked out for the purpose, to fire on me the moment I got into the
-pulpit.’
-
-That the practices of the mob were not frowned upon by the revolutionary
-leaders, there is good reason for believing. The provincial Congress
-of New York, in December 1776, went so far as to order the committee
-of public safety to secure all the pitch and tar ‘necessary for the
-public use and public safety.’ Even Washington seems to have approved of
-persecution of the Tories by the mob. In 1776 General Putnam, meeting a
-procession of the Sons of Liberty who were parading a number of Tories
-on rails up and down the streets of New York, attempted to put a stop to
-the barbarous proceeding. Washington, on hearing of this, administered
-a reprimand to Putnam, declaring ‘that to discourage such proceedings
-was to injure the cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that
-nobody would attempt it but an enemy to his country.’
-
-Very early in the Revolution the Whigs began to organize. They first
-formed themselves into local associations, similar to the Puritan
-associations in the Great Rebellion in England, and announced that they
-would ‘hold all those persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies
-who shall refuse to subscribe this association.’ In connection with these
-associations there sprang up local committees.
-
- From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street,
- The new-born statesmen in committee meet,
-
-sang a Loyalist verse-writer. Very soon there was completed an
-organization, stretching from the Continental Congress and the provincial
-congresses at one end down to the pettiest parish committees on the
-other, which was destined to prove a most effective engine for stamping
-out loyalism, and which was to contribute in no small degree to the
-success of the Revolution.
-
-Though the action of the mob never entirely disappeared, the persecution
-of the Tories was taken over, as soon as the Revolution got under way,
-by this semi-official organization. What usually happened was that the
-Continental or provincial Congress laid down the general policy to be
-followed, and the local committees carried it out in detail. Thus, when
-early in 1776 the Continental Congress recommended the disarming of the
-Tories, it was the local committees which carried the recommendation
-into effect. During this early period the conduct of the revolutionary
-authorities was remarkably moderate. They arrested the Tories, tried
-them, held them at bail for their good behaviour, quarantined them in
-their houses, exiled them to other districts, but only in extreme cases
-did they imprison them. There was, of course, a good deal of hardship
-entailed on the Tories; and occasionally the agents of the revolutionary
-committees acted without authority, as when Colonel Dayton, who was sent
-to arrest Sir John Johnson at his home in the Mohawk valley, sacked
-Johnson Hall and carried off Lady Johnson a prisoner, on finding that Sir
-John Johnson had escaped to Canada with many of his Highland retainers.
-But, as a rule, in this early period, the measures taken both by the
-revolutionary committees and by the army officers were easily defensible
-on the ground of military necessity.
-
-But with the Declaration of Independence a new order of things was
-inaugurated. That measure revolutionized the political situation. With
-the severance of the Imperial tie, loyalism became tantamount to treason
-to the state; and Loyalists laid themselves open to all the penalties of
-treason. The Declaration of Independence was followed by the test laws.
-These laws compelled every one to abjure allegiance to the British crown,
-and swear allegiance to the state in which he resided. A record was kept
-of those who took the oath, and to them were given certificates without
-which no traveller was safe from arrest. Those who failed to take the
-oath became liable to imprisonment, confiscation of property, banishment,
-and even death.
-
-Even among the Whigs there was a good deal of opposition to the test
-laws. Peter Van Schaak, a moderate Whig of New York state, so strongly
-disapproved of the test laws that he seceded from the revolutionary
-party. ‘Had you,’ he wrote, ‘at the beginning of the war, permitted every
-one differing in sentiment from you, to take the other side, or at least
-to have removed out of the State, with their property ... it would have
-been a conduct magnanimous and just. But, now, after restraining those
-persons from removing; punishing them, if, in the attempt, they were
-apprehended; selling their estates if they escaped; compelling them to
-the duties of subjects under heavy penalties; deriving aid from them in
-the prosecution of the war ... now to compel them to take an oath is an
-act of severity.’
-
-Of course, the test laws were not rigidly or universally enforced. In
-Pennsylvania only a small proportion of the population took the oath. In
-New York, out of one thousand Tories arrested for failure to take the
-oath, six hundred were allowed to go on bail, and the rest were merely
-acquitted or imprisoned. On the whole the American revolutionists were
-not bloody-minded men; they inaugurated no September Massacres, no Reign
-of Terror, no _dragonnades_. There was a distinct aversion among them to
-applying the death penalty. ‘We shall have many unhappy persons to take
-their trials for their life next Oyer court,’ wrote a North Carolina
-patriot. ‘Law should be strictly adhered to, severity exercised, but the
-doors of mercy should never be shut.’
-
-The test laws, nevertheless, and the other discriminating laws passed
-against the Loyalists provided the excuse for a great deal of barbarism
-and ruthlessness. In Pennsylvania bills of attainder were passed against
-no fewer than four hundred and ninety persons. The property of nearly all
-these persons was confiscated, and several of them were put to death. A
-detailed account has come down to us of the hanging of two Loyalists of
-Philadelphia named Roberts and Carlisle. These two men had shown great
-zeal for the king’s cause when the British Army was in Philadelphia.
-After Philadelphia was evacuated, they were seized by the Whigs, tried,
-and condemned to be hanged. Roberts’s wife and children went before
-Congress and on their knees begged for mercy; but in vain. One November
-morning of 1778 the two men were marched to the gallows, with halters
-round their necks. At the gallows, wrote a spectator, Roberts’s behaviour
-‘did honour to human nature.’
-
- He nothing common did or mean
- Upon that memorable scene
-
-Addressing the spectators, he told them that his conscience acquitted him
-of guilt; that he suffered for doing his duty to his sovereign; and that
-his blood would one day be required at their hands. Then he turned to his
-children and charged them to remember the principles for which he died,
-and to adhere to them while they had breath.
-
-But if these judicial murders were few and far between, in other respects
-the revolutionists showed the Tories little mercy. Both those who
-remained in the country and those who fled from it were subjected to an
-attack on their personal fortunes which gradually impoverished them.
-This was carried on at first by a nibbling system of fines and special
-taxation. Loyalists were fined for evading military service, for the hire
-of substitutes, for any manifestation of loyalty. They were subjected
-to double and treble taxes; and in New York and South Carolina they
-had to make good all robberies committed in their counties. Then the
-revolutionary leaders turned to the expedient of confiscation. From the
-very first some of the patriots, without doubt, had an eye on Loyalist
-property; and when the coffers of the Continental Congress had been
-emptied, the idea gained ground that the Revolution might be financed
-by the confiscation of Loyalist estates. Late in 1777 the plan was
-embodied in a resolution of the Continental Congress, and the states were
-recommended to invest the proceeds in continental loan certificates. The
-idea proved very popular; and in spite of a great deal of corruption
-in connection with the sale and transfer of the land, large sums found
-their way as a result into the state exchequers. In New York alone over
-£3,600,000 worth of property was acquired by the state.
-
-The Tory who refused to take the oath of allegiance became in fact
-an outlaw. He did not have in the courts of law even the rights of a
-foreigner. If his neighbours owed him money, he had no legal redress.
-He might be assaulted, insulted, blackmailed, or slandered, yet the law
-granted him no remedy. No relative or friend could leave an orphan child
-to his guardianship. He could be the executor or administrator of no
-man’s estate. He could neither buy land nor transfer it to another. If he
-was a lawyer, he was denied the right to practise his profession.
-
-This strict legal view of the status of the Loyalist may not have been
-always and everywhere enforced. There were Loyalists, such as the Rev.
-Mather Byles of Boston, who refused to be molested, and who survived the
-Revolution unharmed. But when all allowance is made for these exceptions,
-it is not difficult to understand how the great majority of avowed Tories
-came to take refuge within the British lines, to enlist under the
-British flag, and, when the Revolution had proved successful, to leave
-their homes for ever and begin life anew amid other surroundings. The
-persecution to which they were subjected left them no alternative.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS
-
-
-It has been charged against the Loyalists, and the charge cannot be
-denied, that at the beginning of the Revolution they lacked initiative,
-and were slow to organize and defend themselves. It was not, in fact,
-until 1776 that Loyalist regiments began to be formed on an extensive
-scale. There were several reasons why this was so. In the first place a
-great many of the Loyalists, as has been pointed out, were not at the
-outset in complete sympathy with the policy of the British government;
-and those who might have been willing to take up arms were very early
-disarmed and intimidated by the energy of the revolutionary authorities.
-In the second place that very conservatism which made the Loyalists draw
-back from revolution hindered them from taking arms until the king gave
-them commissions and provided facilities for military organization. And
-there is no fact better attested in the history of the Revolution than
-the failure of the British authorities to understand until it was too
-late the great advantages to be derived from the employment of Loyalist
-levies. The truth is that the British officers did not think much more
-highly of the Loyalists than they did of the rebels. For both they had
-the Briton’s contempt for the colonial, and the professional soldier’s
-contempt for the armed civilian.
-
-Had more use been made of the Tories, the military history of the
-Revolution might have been very different. They understood the conditions
-of warfare in the New World much better than the British regulars or the
-German mercenaries. Had the advice of prominent Loyalists been accepted
-by the British commander at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, it is highly
-probable that there would have been none of that carnage in the British
-ranks which made of the victory a virtual defeat. It was said that
-Burgoyne’s early successes were largely due to the skill with which he
-used his Loyalist auxiliaries. And in the latter part of the war, it must
-be confessed that the successes of the Loyalist troops far outshone those
-of the British regulars. In the Carolinas Tarleton’s Loyal Cavalry swept
-everything before them, until their defeat at the Cowpens by Daniel
-Morgan. In southern New York Governor Tryon’s levies carried fire and
-sword up the Hudson, into ‘Indigo Connecticut,’ and over into New Jersey.
-Along the northern frontier, the Loyalist forces commanded by Sir John
-Johnson and Colonel Butler made repeated incursions into the Mohawk,
-Schoharie, and Wyoming valleys and, in each case, after leaving a trail
-of desolation behind them, they withdrew to the Canadian border in good
-order. The trouble was that, owing to the stupidity and incapacity of
-Lord George Germain, the British minister who was more than any other man
-responsible for the misconduct of the American War, these expeditions
-were not made part of a properly concerted plan; and so they sank into
-the category of isolated raids.
-
-From the point of view of Canadian history, the most interesting of these
-expeditions were those conducted by Sir John Johnson and Colonel Butler.
-They were carried on with the Canadian border as their base-line. It
-was by the men who were engaged in them that Upper Canada was at first
-largely settled; and for a century and a quarter there have been levelled
-against these men by American and even by English writers charges of
-barbarism and inhumanity about which Canadians in particular are
-interested to know the truth.
-
-Most of Johnson’s and Butler’s men came from central or northern New
-York. To explain how this came about it is necessary to make an excursion
-into previous history. In 1738 there had come out to America a young
-Irishman of good family named William Johnson. The famous naval hero, Sir
-Peter Warren, who was an uncle of Johnson, had large tracts of land in
-the Mohawk valley, in northern New York. These estates he employed his
-nephew in administering; and, when he died, he bequeathed them to him. In
-the meantime William Johnson had begun to improve his opportunities. He
-had built up a prosperous trade with the Indians; he had learned their
-language and studied their ways; and he had gained such an ascendancy
-over them that he came to be known as ‘the Indian-tamer,’ and was
-appointed the British superintendent-general for Indian Affairs. In the
-Seven Years’ War he served with great distinction against the French. He
-defeated Baron Dieskau at Lake George in 1755, and he captured Niagara
-in 1759; for the first of these services he was created a baronet, and
-received a pension of £5000 a year. During his later years he lived at
-his house, Johnson Hall, on the Mohawk river; and he died in 1774, on the
-eve of the American Revolution, leaving his title and his vast estates to
-his only son, Sir John.
-
-Just before his death Sir William Johnson had interested himself in
-schemes for the colonization of his lands. In these he was remarkably
-successful. He secured in the main two classes of immigrants, Germans
-and Scottish Highlanders. Of the Highlanders he must have induced more
-than one thousand to emigrate from Scotland, some of them as late as
-1773. Many of them had been Jacobites; some of them had seen service
-at Culloden Moor; and one of them, Alexander Macdonell, whose son
-subsequently sat in the first legislature of Upper Canada, had been on
-Bonnie Prince Charlie’s personal staff. These men had no love for the
-Hanoverians; but their loyalty to their new chieftain, and their lack of
-sympathy with American ideals, kept them at the time of the Revolution
-true almost without exception to the British cause. King George had no
-more faithful allies in the New World than these rebels of the ’45.
-
-They were the first of the Loyalists to arm and organize themselves.
-In the summer of 1775 Colonel Allan Maclean, a Scottish officer in
-the English army, aided by Colonel Guy Johnson, a brother-in-law of
-Sir John Johnson, raised a regiment in the Mohawk valley known as the
-Royal Highland Emigrants, which he took to Canada, and which did good
-service against the American invaders under Montgomery in the autumn
-of the same year. In the spring of 1776 Sir John Johnson received word
-that the revolutionary authorities had determined on his arrest, and
-he was compelled to flee from Johnson Hall to Canada. With him he took
-three hundred of his Scottish dependants; and he was followed by the
-Mohawk Indians under their famous chief, Joseph Brant. In Canada Johnson
-received a colonel’s commission to raise two Loyalist battalions of five
-hundred men each, to be known as the King’s Royal Regiment of New York.
-The full complement was soon made up from the numbers of Loyalists who
-flocked across the border from other counties of northern New York; and
-Sir John Johnson’s ‘Royal Greens,’ as they were commonly called, were
-in the thick of nearly every border foray from that time until the end
-of the war. It was by these men that the north shore of the St Lawrence
-river, between Montreal and Kingston, was mainly settled. As the tide of
-refugees swelled, other regiments were formed. Colonel John Butler, one
-of Sir John Johnson’s right-hand men, organized his Loyal Rangers, a body
-of irregular troops who adopted, with modifications, the Indian method of
-warfare. It was against this corps that some of the most serious charges
-of brutality and bloodthirstiness were made by American historians;
-and it was by this corps that the Niagara district of Upper Canada was
-settled after the war.
-
-It is not possible here to give more than a brief sketch of the
-operations of these troops. In 1777 they formed an important part of
-the forces with which General Burgoyne, by way of Lake Champlain, and
-Colonel St Leger, by way of Oswego, attempted, unsuccessfully, to reach
-Albany. An offshoot of the first battalion of the ‘Royal Greens,’ known
-as Jessup’s Corps, was with Burgoyne at Saratoga; and the rest of the
-regiment was with St Leger, under the command of Sir John Johnson
-himself. The ambuscade of Oriskany, where Sir John Johnson’s men first
-met their Whig neighbours and relatives, who were defending Fort Stanwix,
-was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Its ‘fratricidal butchery’
-denuded the Mohawk valley of most of its male population; and it was said
-that if Tryon county ‘smiled again during the war, it smiled through
-tears.’ The battle was inconclusive, so bitterly was it contested; but it
-was successful in stemming the advance of St Leger’s forces.
-
-The next year (1778) there was an outbreak of sporadic raiding all along
-the border. Alexander Macdonell, the former aide-de-camp of Bonnie Prince
-Charlie, fell with three hundred Loyalists on the Dutch settlements of
-the Schoharie valley and laid them waste. Macdonell’s ideas of border
-warfare were derived from his Highland ancestors; and, as he expected
-no quarter, he gave none. Colonel Butler, with his Rangers and a party
-of Indians, descended into the valley of Wyoming, which was a sort of
-debatable ground between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and carried fire
-and sword through the settlements there. This raid was commemorated
-by Thomas Campbell in a most unhistorical poem entitled _Gertrude of
-Wyoming_:
-
- On Susquehana’s side, fair Wyoming!
- Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wall
- And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
- Of what thy gentle people did befall.
-
-Later in the year Walter Butler, the son of Colonel John Butler, and
-Joseph Brant, with a party of Loyalists and Mohawks, made a similar
-inroad on Cherry Valley, south of Springfield in the state of New York.
-On this occasion Brant’s Indians got beyond control, and more than fifty
-defenceless old men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood.
-
-The Americans took their revenge the following year. A large force under
-General Sullivan invaded the settlements of the Six Nations Indians in
-the Chemung and Genesee valleys, and exacted an eye for an eye and a
-tooth for a tooth. They burned the villages, destroyed the crops, and
-turned the helpless women and children out to face the coming winter.
-Most of the Indians during the winter of 1779-80 were dependent on the
-mercy of the British commissaries.
-
-This kind of warfare tends to perpetuate itself indefinitely. In 1780
-the Loyalists and Indians returned to the attack. In May Sir John
-Johnson with his ‘Royal Greens’ made a descent into the Mohawk valley,
-fell upon his ‘rebellious birthplace,’ and carried off rich booty and
-many prisoners. In the early autumn, with a force composed of his own
-regiment, two hundred of Butler’s Rangers, and some regulars and Indians,
-he crossed over to the Schoharie valley, devastated it, and then returned
-to the Mohawk valley, where he completed the work of the previous spring.
-All attempts to crush him failed. At the battle of Fox’s Mills he escaped
-defeat or capture by the American forces under General Van Rensselaer
-largely on account of the dense smoke with which the air was filled from
-the burning of barns and villages.
-
-How far the Loyalists under Johnson and Butler were open to the charges
-of inhumanity and barbarism so often levelled against them, is difficult
-to determine. The charges are based almost wholly on unsubstantial
-tradition. The greater part of the excesses complained of, it is safe to
-say, were perpetrated by the Indians; and Sir John Johnson and Colonel
-Butler can no more be blamed for the excesses of the Indians at Cherry
-Valley than Montcalm can be blamed for their excesses at Fort William
-Henry. It was unfortunate that the military opinion of that day regarded
-the use of savages as necessary, and no one deplored this use more than
-men like Haldimand and Carleton; but Washington and the Continental
-Congress were as ready to receive the aid of the Indians as were the
-British. The difficulty of the Americans was that most of the Indians
-were on the other side.
-
-That there were, however, atrocities committed by the Loyalists cannot
-be doubted. Sir John Johnson himself told the revolutionists that ‘their
-Tory neighbours, and not himself, were blameable for those acts.’ There
-are well-authenticated cases of atrocities committed by Alexander
-Macdonell: in 1781 he ordered his men to shoot down a prisoner taken
-near Johnstown, and when the men bungled their task, Macdonell cut the
-prisoner down with his broadsword. When Colonel Butler returned from
-Cherry Valley, Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him, and wrote to
-him that ‘such indiscriminate vengeance taken even upon the treacherous
-and cruel enemy they are engaged against is useless and disreputable to
-themselves, as it is contrary to the disposition and maxims of their King
-whose cause they are fighting.’
-
-But rumour exaggerated whatever atrocities there were. For many years the
-Americans believed that the Tories had lifted scalps like the Indians;
-and later, when the Americans captured York in 1813, they found what
-they regarded as a signal proof of this barbarous practice among the
-Loyalists, in the speaker’s wig, which was hanging beside the chair in
-the legislative chamber! There may have been members of Butler’s Rangers
-who borrowed from the Indians this hideous custom, just as there were
-American frontiersmen who were guilty of it; but it must not be imagined
-that it was a common practice on either side. Except at Cherry Valley,
-there is no proof that any violence was done by the Loyalists to women
-and children. On his return from Wyoming, Colonel Butler reported: ‘I can
-with truth inform you that in the destruction of this settlement not a
-single person has been hurt of the inhabitants, but such as were armed;
-to those indeed the Indians gave no quarter.’
-
-In defence of the Loyalists, two considerations may be urged. In the
-first place, it must be remembered that they were men who had been
-evicted from their homes, and whose property had been confiscated. They
-had been placed under the ban of the law: the payment of their debts had
-been denied them; and they had been forbidden to return to their native
-land under penalty of death without benefit of clergy. They had been
-imprisoned, fined, subjected to special taxation; their families had been
-maltreated, and were in many cases still in the hands of their enemies.
-They would have been hardly human had they waged a mimic warfare. In the
-second place, their depredations were of great value from a military
-point of view. Not only did they prevent thousands of militiamen from
-joining the Continental army, but they seriously threatened the sources
-of Washington’s food supply. The valleys which they ravaged were the
-granary of the revolutionary forces. In 1780 Sir John Johnson destroyed
-in the Schoharie valley alone no less than eighty thousand bushels of
-grain; and this loss, as Washington wrote to the president of Congress,
-‘threatened alarming consequences.’ That this work of destruction was
-agreeable to the Loyalists cannot be doubted; but this fact does not
-diminish its value as a military measure.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR
-
-
-The war was brought to a virtual termination by the surrender of
-Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The definitive articles of
-peace were signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783. During the two
-years that intervened between these events, the lot of the Loyalists was
-one of gloomy uncertainty. They found it hard to believe that the British
-government would abandon them to the mercy of their enemies; and yet
-the temper of the revolutionists toward them continued such that there
-seemed little hope of concession or conciliation. Success had not taught
-the rebels the grace of forgiveness. At the capitulation of Yorktown,
-Washington had refused to treat with the Loyalists in Cornwallis’s army
-on the same terms as with the British regulars; and Cornwallis had been
-compelled to smuggle his Loyalist levies out of Yorktown on the ship that
-carried the news of his surrender to New York. As late as 1782 fresh
-confiscation laws had been passed in Georgia and the Carolinas; and in
-New York a law had been passed cancelling all debts due to Loyalists, on
-condition that one-fortieth of the debt was paid into the state treasury.
-These were straws which showed the way the wind was blowing.
-
-In the negotiations leading up to the Peace of Versailles there were
-no clauses so long and bitterly discussed as those relating to the
-Loyalists. The British commissioners stood out at first for the principle
-of complete amnesty to them and restitution of all they had lost; and
-it is noteworthy that the French minister added his plea to theirs. But
-Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues refused to agree to this formula.
-They took the ground that they, as the representatives merely of the
-Continental Congress, had not the right to bind the individual states in
-such a matter. The argument was a quibble. Their real reason was that
-they were well aware that public opinion in America would not support
-them in such a concession. A few enlightened men in America, such as John
-Adams, favoured a policy of compensation to the Loyalists, ‘how little
-soever they deserve it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary’;
-but the attitude of the great majority of the Americans had been clearly
-demonstrated by a resolution passed in the legislature of Virginia on
-December 17, 1782, to the effect that all demands for the restitution of
-confiscated property were wholly inadmissible. Even some of the Loyalists
-had begun to realize that a revolution which had touched property was
-bound to be permanent, and that the American commissioners could no more
-give back to them their confiscated lands than Charles II was able to
-give back to his father’s cavaliers the estates they had lost in the
-Civil War.
-
-[Illustration: LORD CORNWALLIS
-
-From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery]
-
-The American commissioners agreed, finally, that no future confiscations
-should take place, that imprisoned Loyalists should be released, that
-no further persecutions should be permitted, and that creditors on
-either side should ‘meet with no lawful impediment’ to the recovery of
-all good debts in sterling money. But with regard to the British demand
-for restitution, all they could be induced to sign was a promise that
-Congress would ‘earnestly recommend to the legislatures of the respective
-states’ a policy of amnesty and restitution.
-
-In making this last recommendation, it is difficult not to convict the
-American commissioners of something very like hypocrisy. There seems
-to be no doubt that they knew the recommendation would not be complied
-with; and little or no attempt was made by them to persuade the states
-to comply with it. In after years the clause was represented by the
-Americans as a mere form of words, necessary to bring the negotiations
-to an end, and to save the face of the British government. To this day
-it has remained, except in one or two states, a dead letter. On the
-other hand it is impossible not to convict the British commissioners of
-a betrayal of the Loyalists. ‘Never,’ said Lord North in the House of
-Commons, ‘never was the honour, the humanity, the principles, the policy
-of a nation so grossly abused, as in the desertion of those men who are
-now exposed to every punishment that desertion and poverty can inflict,
-because they were not rebels.’ ‘In ancient or in modern history,’ said
-Lord Loughborough in the House of Lords, ‘there cannot be found an
-instance of so shameful a desertion of men who have sacrificed all to
-their duty and to their reliance upon our faith.’ It seems probable that
-the British commissioners could have obtained, on paper at any rate,
-better terms for the Loyalists. It is very doubtful if the Americans
-would have gone to war again over such a question. In 1783 the position
-of Great Britain was relatively not weaker, but stronger, than in 1781,
-when hostilities had ceased. The attitude of the French minister, and the
-state of the French finances, made it unlikely that France would lend her
-support to further hostilities. And there is no doubt that the American
-states were even more sorely in need of peace than was Great Britain.
-
-When the terms of peace were announced, great was the bitterness among
-the Loyalists. One of them protested in _Rivington’s Gazette_ that ‘even
-robbers, murderers, and rebels are faithful to their fellows and never
-betray each other,’ and another sang,
-
- ’Tis an honour to serve the bravest of nations,
- And be left to be hanged in their capitulations.
-
-If the terms of the peace had been observed, the plight of the Loyalists
-would have been bad enough. But as it was, the outcome proved even
-worse. Every clause in the treaty relating to the Loyalists was broken
-over and over again. There was no sign of an abatement of the popular
-feeling against them; indeed, in some places, the spirit of persecution
-seemed to blaze out anew. One of Washington’s bitterest sayings was
-uttered at this time, when he said of the Loyalists that ‘he could see
-nothing better for them than to commit suicide.’ Loyalist creditors
-found it impossible to recover their debts in America, while they were
-themselves sued in the British courts by their American creditors, and
-their property was still being confiscated by the American legislatures.
-The legislature of New York publicly declined to reverse its policy
-of confiscation, on the ground that Great Britain had offered no
-compensation for the property which her friends had destroyed. Loyalists
-who ventured to return home under the treaty of peace were insulted,
-tarred and feathered, whipped, and even ham-strung. All over the country
-there were formed local committees or associations with the object of
-preventing renewed intercourse with the Loyalists and the restitution
-of Loyalist property. ‘The proceedings of these people,’ wrote Sir Guy
-Carleton, ‘are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a
-pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a
-desire of rapine are the great incentives.’
-
-The Loyalists were even denied civil rights in most of the states. In
-1784 an act was passed in New York declaring that all who had held
-office under the British, or helped to fit out vessels of war, or who had
-served as privates or officers in the British Army, or who had left the
-state, were guilty of ‘misprision of treason,’ and were disqualified from
-both the franchise and public office. There was in fact hardly a state in
-1785 where the Loyalist was allowed to vote. In New York Loyalist lawyers
-were not allowed to practise until April 1786, and then only on condition
-of taking an ‘oath of abjuration and allegiance.’ In the same state,
-Loyalists were subjected to such invidious special taxation that in 1785
-one of them confessed that ‘those in New York whose estates have not been
-confiscated are so loaded with taxes and other grievances that there is
-nothing left but to sell out and move into the protection of the British
-government.’
-
-It was clear that something would have to be done by the British
-government for the Loyalists’ relief. ‘It is utterly impossible,’ wrote
-Sir Guy Carleton to Lord North, ‘to leave exposed to the rage and
-violence of these people [the Americans] men of character whose only
-offence has been their attachment to the King’s service.’ Accordingly
-the British government made amends for its betrayal of the Loyalists by
-taking them under its wing. It arranged for the transportation of all
-those who wished to leave the revolted states; it offered them homes
-in the provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec; it granted half-pay to the
-officers after their regiments were reduced; and it appointed a royal
-commission to provide compensation for the losses sustained.
-
-[Illustration: UPPER AND LOWER CANADA AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES AT THE
-TIME OF THE LOYALISTS SETTLEMENTS]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA
-
-
-When the terms of peace became known, tens of thousands of the Loyalists
-shook the dust of their ungrateful country from their feet, never to
-return. Of these the more influential part, both during and after the
-war, sailed for England. The royal officials, the wealthy merchants,
-landowners, and professional men, the high military officers—these went
-to England to press their claims for compensation and preferment. The
-humbler element, for the most part, migrated to the remaining British
-colonies in North America. About two hundred families went to the West
-Indies, a few to Newfoundland, many to what were afterwards called Upper
-and Lower Canada, and a vast army to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
-Prince Edward Island.
-
-The advantages of Nova Scotia as a field for immigration had been known
-to the people of New England and New York before the Revolutionary War
-had broken out. Shortly after the Peace of 1763 parts of the Nova Scotian
-peninsula and the banks of the river St John had been sparsely settled by
-colonists from the south; and during the Revolutionary War considerable
-sympathy with the cause of the Continental Congress was shown by these
-colonists from New England. Nova Scotia, moreover, was contiguous to the
-New England colonies, and it was therefore not surprising that after the
-Revolution the Loyalists should have turned their eyes to Nova Scotia as
-a refuge for their families.
-
-The first considerable migration took place at the time of the evacuation
-of Boston by General Howe in March 1776. Boston was at that time a town
-with a population of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, and of these
-nearly one thousand accompanied the British Army to Halifax. ‘Neither
-Hell, Hull, nor Halifax,’ said one of them, ‘can afford worse shelter
-than Boston.’ The embarkation was accomplished amid the most hopeless
-confusion. ‘Nothing can be more diverting,’ wrote a Whig, ‘than to see
-the town in its present situation; all is uproar and confusion; carts,
-trucks, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, coaches, chaises, all driving as if
-the very devil was after them.’ The fleet was composed of every vessel
-on which hands could be laid. In Benjamin Hallowell’s cabin ‘there were
-thirty-seven persons—men, women, and children; servants, masters, and
-mistresses—obliged to pig together on the floor, there being no berths.’
-It was a miracle that the crazy flotilla arrived safely at Halifax; but
-there it arrived after tossing about for six days in the March tempests.
-General Howe remained with his army at Halifax until June. Then he set
-sail for New York. Some of the Loyalists accompanied him to New York, but
-the greater number took passage for England. Only a few of the company
-remained in Nova Scotia.
-
-From 1776 to 1783 small bodies of Loyalists continually found their
-way to Halifax; but it was not until the evacuation of New York by the
-British in 1783 that the full tide of immigration set in. As soon as news
-leaked out that the terms of peace were not likely to be favourable,
-and it became evident that the animus of the Whigs showed no signs of
-abating, the Loyalists gathered in New York looked about for a country in
-which to begin life anew. Most of them were too poor to think of going to
-England, and the British provinces to the north seemed the most hopeful
-place of resort. In 1782 several associations were formed in New York
-for the purpose of furthering the interests of those who proposed to
-settle in Nova Scotia. One of these associations had as its president
-the famous Dr Seabury, and as its secretary Sampson Salter Blowers,
-afterwards chief justice of Nova Scotia. Its officers waited on Sir Guy
-Carleton, and received his approval of their plans. It was arranged
-that a first instalment of about five hundred colonists should set out
-in the autumn of 1782, in charge of three agents, Amos Botsford, Samuel
-Cummings, and Frederick Hauser, whose duty it should be to spy out the
-land and obtain grants.
-
-The party sailed from New York, in nine transport ships, on October 19,
-1782, and arrived a few days later at Annapolis Royal. The population
-of Annapolis, which was only a little over a hundred, was soon swamped
-by the numbers that poured out of the transports. ‘All the houses and
-barracks are crowded,’ wrote the Rev. Jacob Bailey, who was then at
-Annapolis, ‘and many are unable to procure any lodgings.’ The three
-agents, leaving the colonists at Annapolis, went first to Halifax, and
-then set out on a trip of exploration through the Annapolis valley, after
-which they crossed the Bay of Fundy and explored the country adjacent to
-the river St John. On their return they published glowing accounts of the
-country, and their report was transmitted to their friends in New York.
-
-The result of the favourable reports sent in by these agents, and by
-others who had gone ahead, was an invasion of Nova Scotia such as no
-one, not even the provincial authorities, had begun to expect. As the
-names of the thousands who were anxious to go to Nova Scotia poured into
-the adjutant-general’s office in New York, it became clear to Sir Guy
-Carleton that with the shipping facilities at his disposal he could not
-attempt to transport them all at once. It was decided that the ships
-would have to make two trips; and, as a matter of fact, most of them made
-three or four trips before the last British soldier was able to leave the
-New York shore.
-
-On April 26, 1783, the first or ‘spring’ fleet set sail. It had on board
-no less than seven thousand persons, men, women, children, and servants.
-Half of these went to the mouth of the river St John, and about half to
-Port Roseway, at the south-west end of the Nova Scotian peninsula. The
-voyage was fair, and the ships arrived at their destinations without
-mishap. But at St John at least, the colonists found that almost no
-preparations had been made to receive them. They were disembarked on
-a wild and primeval shore, where they had to clear away the brushwood
-before they could pitch their tents or build their shanties. The prospect
-must have been disheartening. ‘Nothing but wilderness before our eyes,
-the women and children did not refrain from tears,’ wrote one of the
-exiles; and the grandmother of Sir Leonard Tilley used to tell her
-descendants, ‘I climbed to the top of Chipman’s Hill and watched the
-sails disappearing in the distance, and such a feeling of loneliness came
-over me that, although I had not shed a tear through all the war, I sat
-down on the damp moss with my baby in my lap and cried.’
-
-All summer and autumn the ships kept plying to and fro. In June the
-‘summer fleet’ brought about 2500 colonists to St John River, Annapolis,
-Port Roseway, and Fort Cumberland. By August 23 John Parr, the governor
-of Nova Scotia, wrote that ‘upward of 12,000 souls have already arrived
-from New York,’ and that as many more were expected. By the end of
-September he estimated that 18,000 had arrived, and stated that 10,000
-more were still to come. By the end of the year he computed the total
-immigration to have amounted to 30,000. As late as January 15, 1784,
-the refugees were still arriving. On that date Governor Parr wrote to
-Lord North announcing the arrival of ‘a considerable number of Refugee
-families, who must be provided for in and about the town at extraordinary
-expence, as at this season of the year I cannot send them into the
-country.’ ‘I cannot,’ he added, ‘better describe the wretched condition
-of these people than by inclosing your lordship a list of those just
-arrived in the Clinton transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly
-women and children, all still on board, as I have not yet been able to
-find any sort of place for them, and the cold setting in severe.’ There
-is a tradition in Halifax that the cabooses had to be taken off the
-ships, and ranged along the principal street, in order to shelter these
-unfortunates during the winter.
-
-New York was evacuated by the British troops on November 25, 1783. Sir
-Guy Carleton did not withdraw from the city until he was satisfied that
-every person who desired the protection of the British flag was embarked
-on the boats. During the latter half of the year Carleton was repeatedly
-requested by Congress to fix some precise limit to his occupation of New
-York. He replied briefly, but courteously, that he was doing the best he
-could, and that no man could do more. When Congress objected that the
-Loyalists were not included in the agreement with regard to evacuation,
-Carleton replied that he held opposite views; and that in any case it was
-a point of honour with him that no troops should embark until the last
-person who claimed his protection should be safely on board a British
-ship. As time went on, his replies to Congress grew shorter and more
-incisive. On being requested to name an outside date for the evacuation
-of the city, he declared that he could not even guess when the last ship
-would be loaded, but that he was resolved to remain until it was. He
-pointed out, moreover, that the more the uncontrolled violence of their
-citizens drove refugees to his protection, the longer would evacuation
-be delayed. ‘I should show,’ he said, ‘an indifference to the feelings
-of humanity, as well as to the honour and interest of the nation whom
-I serve, to leave any of the Loyalists that are desirous to quit the
-country, a prey to the violence they conceive they have so much cause to
-apprehend.’
-
-After the evacuation of New York, therefore, the number of refugee
-Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia was small and insignificant. In 1784
-and 1785 there arrived a few persons who had tried to take up the thread
-of their former life in the colonies, but had given up the attempt. And
-in August 1784 the _Sally_ transport from London cast anchor at Halifax
-with three hundred destitute refugees on board. ‘As if there was not a
-sufficiency of such distress’d objects already in this country,’ wrote
-Edward Winslow from Halifax, ‘the good people of England have collected
-a whole ship load of all kinds of vagrants from the streets of London,
-and sent them out to Nova Scotia. Great numbers died on the passage
-of various disorders—the miserable remnant are landed here and have
-now no covering but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a
-proportion of provisions at my door.’
-
-But the increase of population in Nova Scotia from immigration during
-the years immediately following 1783 was partly counterbalanced by the
-defections from the province. Many of the refugees quailed before the
-prospect of carving out a home in the wilderness. ‘It is, I think, the
-roughest land I ever saw’; ‘I am totally discouraged’; ‘I am sick of
-this Province’—such expressions as these abound in the journals and
-diaries of the settlers. There were complaints that deception had been
-practised. ‘All our golden promises,’ wrote a Long Island Loyalist, ‘are
-vanished in smoke. We were taught to believe this place was not barren
-and foggy as had been represented, but we find it ten times worse. We
-have nothing but his Majesty’s rotten pork and unbaked flour to subsist
-on.... It is the most inhospitable clime that ever mortal set foot on.’
-At first there was great distress among the refugees. The immigration of
-1783 had at one stroke trebled the population of Nova Scotia; and the
-resources of the province were inadequate to meet the demand on them.
-‘Nova Scarcity’ was the nickname for the province invented by a New
-England wit. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that some who
-had set their hand to the plough turned back. Some of them went to Upper
-Canada; some to England; some to the states from which they had come;
-for within a few years the fury of the anti-Loyalist feeling died down,
-and not a few Loyalists took advantage of this to return to the place of
-their birth.
-
-The most careful analysis of the Loyalist immigration into the Maritime
-Provinces has placed the total number of immigrants at about 35,000.
-These were in settlements scattered broadcast over the face of the map.
-There was a colony of 3000 in Cape Breton, which afforded an ideal field
-for settlement, since before 1783 the governor of Nova Scotia had been
-precluded from granting lands there. In 1784 Cape Breton was erected
-into a separate government, with a lieutenant-governor of its own; and
-settlers flocked into it from Halifax, and even from Canada. Abraham
-Cuyler, formerly mayor of Albany, led a considerable number down the
-St Lawrence and through the Gulf to Cape Breton. On the mainland of
-Nova Scotia there were settlements at Halifax, at Shelburne, at Fort
-Cumberland, at Annapolis and Digby, at Port Mouton, and at other places.
-In what is now New Brunswick there was a settlement at Passamaquoddy Bay,
-and there were other settlements on the St John river extending from
-the mouth up past what is now the city of Fredericton. In Prince Edward
-Island, then called the Island of St John, there was a settlement which
-is variously estimated in size, but which was comparatively unimportant.
-
-The most interesting of these settlements was that at Shelburne, which is
-situated at the south-west corner of Nova Scotia, on one of the finest
-harbours of the Atlantic seaboard. The name of the harbour was originally
-Port Razoir, but this was corrupted by the English settlers into Port
-Roseway. The place had been settled previous to 1783. In 1775 Colonel
-Alexander McNutt, a notable figure of the pre-Loyalist days in Nova
-Scotia, had obtained a grant of 100,000 acres about the harbour, and had
-induced about a dozen Scottish and Irish families to settle there. This
-settlement he had dignified with the name of New Jerusalem. In a short
-time, however, New Jerusalem languished and died, and when the Loyalists
-arrived in May 1783, the only inhabitants of the place were two or three
-fishermen and their families. It would have been well if the Loyalists
-had listened to the testimony of one of these men, who, when he was asked
-how he came to be there, replied that ‘poverty had brought him there, and
-poverty had kept him there.’
-
-The project of settling the shores of Port Roseway had its birth in the
-autumn of 1782, when one hundred and twenty Loyalist families, whose
-attention had been directed to that part of Nova Scotia by a friend in
-Massachusetts, banded together with the object of emigrating thither.
-They first appointed a committee of seven to make arrangements for their
-removal; and, a few weeks later, they commissioned two members of the
-association, Joseph Pynchon and James Dole, to go to Halifax and lay
-before Governor Parr their desires and intentions. Pynchon and Dole,
-on their arrival at Halifax, had an interview with the governor, and
-obtained from him very satisfactory arrangements. The governor agreed
-to give the settlers the land about Port Roseway which they desired. He
-promised them that surveyors should be sent to lay out the grants, that
-carpenters and a supply of 400,000 feet of lumber should be furnished
-for building their houses, that for the first year at least the settlers
-should receive army rations, and that they should be free for ever from
-impressment in the British Navy. All these promises were made on the
-distinct understanding that they should interfere in no way with the
-claims of the Loyalists on the British government for compensation for
-losses sustained in the war. Elated by the reception they had received
-from the governor, the agents wrote home enthusiastic accounts of the
-prospects of the venture. Pynchon even hinted that the new town would
-supersede Halifax. ‘Much talk is here,’ he wrote, ‘of capital of
-Province.... Halifax can’t but be sensible that Port Roseway, if properly
-attended to in encouraging settlers of every denomination, will have much
-the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What
-the consequence will be time only will reveal.’ Many persons at Halifax,
-wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and
-recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St
-John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears
-to jealousy. A few years’ experience must have convinced him that his
-suspicions were ill-founded.
-
-The first instalment of settlers, about four thousand in number, arrived
-in May 1783. They found nothing but the virgin wilderness confronting
-them. But they set to work with a will to clear the land and build
-their houses. ‘As soon as we had set up a kind of tent,’ wrote the Rev.
-Jonathan Beecher in his Journal, ‘we knelt down, my wife and I and my
-two boys, and kissed the dear ground and thanked God that the flag of
-England floated there, and resolved that we would work with the rest
-to become again prosperous and happy.’ By July 11 the work of clearing
-had been so far advanced that it became possible to allot the lands.
-The town had been laid out in five long parallel streets, with other
-streets crossing them at right angles. Each associate was given a town
-lot fronting on one of these streets, as well as a water lot facing the
-harbour, and a fifty-acre farm in the surrounding country. With the aid
-of the government artisans, the wooden houses were rapidly run up; and in
-a couple of months a town sprang up where before had been the forest and
-some fishermen’s huts.
-
-At the end of July Governor Parr paid the town a visit, and christened
-it, curiously enough, with the name of Shelburne, after the British
-statesman who was responsible for the Peace of Versailles. The occasion
-was one of great ceremony. His Excellency, as he landed from the sloop
-_Sophie_, was saluted by the booming of cannon from the ships and from
-the shore. He proceeded up the main street, through a lane of armed men.
-At the place appointed for his reception he was met by the magistrates
-and principal citizens, and presented with an address. In the evening
-there was a dinner given by Captain Mowat on board the _Sophie_; and the
-next evening there was another dinner at the house of Justice Robertson,
-followed by a ball given by the citizens, which was ‘conducted with the
-greatest festivity and decorum,’ and ‘did not break up till five the
-next morning.’ Parr was delighted with Shelburne, and wrote to Sir Guy
-Carleton, ‘From every appearance I have not a doubt but that it will in a
-short time become the most flourishing Town for trade of any in this part
-of the world, and the country will for agriculture.’
-
-For a few years it looked as though Shelburne was not going to belie
-these hopes. The autumn of 1783 brought a considerable increase to its
-population; and in 1784 it seems to have numbered no less than ten
-thousand souls, including the suburb of Burchtown, in which most of
-the negro refugees in New York had been settled. It became a place of
-business and fashion. There was for a time an extensive trade in fish
-and lumber with Great Britain and the West Indies. Shipyards were built,
-from which was launched the first ship built in Nova Scotia after the
-British occupation. Shops, taverns, churches, coffee-houses, sprang up.
-At one time no less than three newspapers were published in the town. The
-military were stationed there, and on summer evenings the military band
-played on the promenade near the bridge. On election day the main street
-was so crowded that ‘one might have walked on the heads of the people.’
-
-Then Shelburne fell into decay. It appeared that the region was
-ill-suited for farming and grazing, and was not capable of supporting
-so large a population. The whale fishery which the Shelburne merchants
-had established in Brazilian waters proved a failure. The regulations
-of the Navigation Acts thwarted their attempts to set up a coasting
-trade. Failure dogged all their enterprises, and soon the glory of
-Shelburne departed. It became like a city of the dead. ‘The houses,’
-wrote Haliburton, ‘were still standing though untenanted. It had all the
-stillness and quiet of a moonlight scene. It was difficult to imagine
-it was deserted. The idea of repose more readily suggested itself than
-decay. All was new and recent. Seclusion, and not death or removal,
-appeared to be the cause of the absence of inhabitants.’ The same
-eye-witness of Shelburne’s ruin described the town later:
-
- The houses, which had been originally built of wood, had
- severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and
- removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted
- into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and
- decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the
- spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the
- blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the
- size of the tenement and the means of its owner. In some places
- they had sunk with the edifice, leaving a heap of ruins, while
- not a few were inclining to their fall, and awaiting the first
- storm to repose again in the dust that now covered those who
- had constructed them. Hundreds of cellars with their stone
- walls and granite partitions were everywhere to be seen like
- uncovered monuments of the dead. Time and decay had done their
- work. All that was perishable had perished, and those numerous
- vaults spoke of a generation that had passed away for ever, and
- without the aid of an inscription, told a tale of sorrow and of
- sadness that overpowered the heart.
-
-Alas for the dreams of the Pynchons and the Parrs! Shelburne is now a
-quaint and picturesque town; but it is not the city which its projectors
-planned.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK
-
-
-When Governor Parr wrote to Sir Guy Carleton, commending in such warm
-terms the advantages of Shelburne, he took occasion at the same time
-to disparage the country about the river St John. ‘I greatly fear,’ he
-wrote, ‘the soil and fertility of that part of this province is overrated
-by people who have explored it partially. I wish it may turn out
-otherwise, but have my fears that there is scarce good land enough for
-them already sent there.’
-
-How Governor Parr came to make so egregious a mistake with regard to
-the comparative merits of the Shelburne districts and those of the
-St John river it is difficult to understand. Edward Winslow frankly
-accused him of jealousy of the St John settlements. Possibly he was only
-too well aware of the inadequacy of the preparations made to receive
-the Loyalists at the mouth of the St John, and wished to divert the
-stream of immigration elsewhere. At any rate his opinion was in direct
-conflict with the unanimous testimony of the agents sent to report on
-the land. Botsford, Cummings, and Hauser had reported: ‘The St John
-is a fine river, equal in magnitude to the Connecticut or Hudson. At
-the mouth of the river is a fine harbour, accessible at all seasons of
-the year—never frozen or obstructed by ice.... There are many settlers
-along the river upon the interval land, who get their living easily.
-The interval lies on the river, and is a most fertile soil, annually
-matured by the overflowing of the river, and produces crops of all kinds
-with little labour, and vegetables in the greatest perfection, parsnips
-of great length, etc.’ Later Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Allen and Edward
-Winslow, the muster-master-general of the provincial forces, were sent
-up as agents for the Loyalist regiments in New York, and they explored
-the river for one hundred and twenty miles above its mouth. ‘We have
-returned,’ wrote Winslow after his trip, ‘delighted beyond expression.’
-
-Governor Parr’s fears, therefore, had little effect on the popularity of
-the St John river district. In all, no less than ten thousand people
-settled on the north side of the Bay of Fundy in 1783. These came, in
-the main, in three divisions. With the spring fleet arrived about three
-thousand people; with the summer fleet not quite two thousand; and with
-the autumn fleet well over three thousand. Of those who came in the
-spring and summer most were civilian refugees; but of those who arrived
-in the autumn nearly all were disbanded soldiers. Altogether thirteen
-distinct corps settled on the St John river. There were the King’s
-American Dragoons, De Lancey’s First and Second Battalions, the New
-Jersey Volunteers, the King’s American Regiment, the Maryland Loyalists,
-the 42nd Regiment, the Prince of Wales American Regiment, the New York
-Volunteers, the Royal Guides and Pioneers, the Queen’s Rangers, the
-Pennsylvania Loyalists, and Arnold’s American Legion. All these regiments
-were reduced, of course, to a fraction of their original strength, owing
-to the fact that numbers of their men had been discharged in New York,
-and that many of the officers had gone to England. But nevertheless, with
-their women and children, their numbers were not far from four thousand.
-
-The arrangements which the government of Nova Scotia had made for
-the reception of this vast army of people were sadly inadequate. In
-the first place there was an unpardonable delay in the surveying and
-allotment of lands. This may be partly explained by the insufficient
-number of surveyors at the disposal of the governor, and by the tedious
-and difficult process of escheating lands already granted; but it is
-impossible not to convict the governor and his staff of want of foresight
-and expedition in making arrangements and carrying them into effect.
-When Joseph Aplin arrived at Parrtown, as the settlement at the mouth
-of the river was for a short time called, he found 1500 frame houses
-and 400 log huts erected, but no one had yet received a title to the
-land on which his house was built. The case of the detachment of the
-King’s American Dragoons who had settled near the mouth of the river was
-particularly hard. They had arrived in advance of the other troops, and
-had settled on the west side of the harbour of St John, in what Edward
-Winslow described as ‘one of the pleasantest spots I ever beheld.’ They
-had already made considerable improvements on their lands, when word came
-that the government had determined to reserve the lands about the mouth
-of the river for the refugees, and to allot blocks of land farther up
-the river to the various regiments of provincial troops. When news of
-this decision reached the officers of the provincial regiments, there
-was great indignation. ‘This is so notorious a forfeiture of the faith
-of government,’ wrote Colonel De Lancey to Edward Winslow, ‘that it
-appears to me almost incredible, and yet I fear it is not to be doubted.
-Could we have known this a little earlier it would have saved you the
-trouble of exploring the country for the benefit of a people you are not
-connected with. In short it is a subject too disagreeable to say more
-upon.’ Winslow, who was hot-headed, talked openly about the provincials
-defending the lands on which they had ‘squatted.’ But protests were in
-vain; and the King’s American Dragoons were compelled to abandon their
-settlement, and to remove up the river to the district of Prince William.
-When the main body of the Loyalist regiments arrived in the autumn they
-found that the blocks of land assigned to them had not yet been surveyed.
-Of their distress and perplexity there is a picture in one of Edward
-Winslow’s letters.
-
- I saw [he says] all those Provincial Regiments, which we have
- so frequently mustered, landing in this inhospitable climate,
- in the month of October, without shelter, and without knowing
- where to find a place to reside. The chagrin of the officers
- was not to me so truly affecting as the poignant distress of
- the men. Those respectable sergeants of Robinson’s, Ludlow’s,
- Cruger’s, Fanning’s, etc.—once hospitable yeomen of the
- country—were addressing me in language which almost murdered me
- as I heard it. ‘Sir, we have served all the war, your honour is
- witness how faithfully. We were promised land; we expected you
- had obtained it for us. We like the country—only let us have a
- spot of our own, and give us such kind of regulations as will
- hinder bad men from injuring us.’
-
-Many of these men had ultimately to go up the river more than fifty miles
-past what is now Fredericton.
-
-A second difficulty was that food and building materials supplied by
-government proved inadequate. At first the settlers were given lumber
-and bricks and tools to build their houses, but the later arrivals, who
-had as a rule to go farthest up the river, were compelled to find their
-building materials in the forest. Even the King’s American Dragoons,
-evicted from their lands on the harbour of St John, were ordered to build
-their huts ‘without any public expence.’ Many were compelled to spend
-the winter in tents banked up with snow; others sheltered themselves in
-huts of bark. The privations and sufferings which many of the refugees
-suffered were piteous. Some, especially among the women and children,
-died from cold and exposure and insufficient food.
-
-In the third place there was great inequality in the area of the lands
-allotted. When the first refugees arrived, it was not expected that so
-many more would follow; and consequently the earlier grants were much
-larger in size than the later. In Parrtown a town lot at length shrank
-in size to one-sixteenth of what it had originally been. There was
-doubtless also some favouritism and respect of persons in the granting
-of lands. At any rate the inequality of the grants caused a great many
-grievances among a certain class of refugees. Chief Justice Finucane of
-Nova Scotia was sent by Governor Parr to attempt to smooth matters out;
-but his conduct seemed to accentuate the ill-feeling and alienate from
-the Nova Scotia authorities the good-will of some of the better class of
-Loyalists.
-
-It was not surprising, under these circumstances, that Governor Parr
-and the officers of his government should have become very unpopular
-on the north side of the Bay of Fundy. Governor Parr was himself much
-distressed over the ill-feeling against him among the Loyalists; and it
-should be explained that his failure to satisfy them did not arise from
-unwillingness to do anything in his power to make them comfortable. The
-trouble was that his executive ability had not been sufficient to cope
-with the serious problems confronting him. Out of the feeling against
-Governor Parr arose an agitation to have the country north of the Bay
-of Fundy removed from his jurisdiction altogether, and erected into a
-separate government. This idea of the division of the province had been
-suggested by Edward Winslow as early as July 1783: ‘Think what multitudes
-have and will come here, and then judge whether it must not from the
-nature of things immediately become a separate government.’ There were
-good reasons why such a change should be made. The distance of Parrtown
-from Halifax made it very difficult and tedious to transact business
-with the government; and the Halifax authorities, being old inhabitants,
-were not in complete sympathy with the new settlers. The erection of a
-new province, moreover, would provide offices for many of the Loyalists
-who were pressing their claims for place on the government at home. The
-settlers, therefore, brought their influence to bear on the Imperial
-authorities, through their friends in London; and in the summer of 1784
-they succeeded in effecting the division they desired, in spite of the
-opposition of Governor Parr and the official class at Halifax. Governor
-Parr, indeed, had a narrow escape from being recalled.
-
-The new province, which it was intended at first to call New Ireland, but
-which was eventually called New Brunswick, was to include all that part
-of Nova Scotia north of a line running across the isthmus from the mouth
-of the Missiquash river to its source, and thence across to the nearest
-part of Baie Verte. This boundary was another triumph for the Loyalists,
-as it placed in New Brunswick Fort Cumberland and the greater part of
-Cumberland county. The government of the province was offered first to
-General Fox, who had been in command at Halifax in 1783, and then to
-General Musgrave; but was declined by both. It was eventually accepted
-by Colonel Thomas Carleton, a brother of Sir Guy Carleton, by whom it
-was held for over thirty years. The chief offices of government fell
-to Loyalists who were in London. The secretary of the province was the
-Rev. Jonathan Odell, a witty New Jersey divine, who had been secretary
-to Sir Guy Carleton in New York. It is interesting to note that Odell’s
-son, the Hon. W. F. Odell, was secretary of the province after him, and
-that between them they held the office for two-thirds of a century. The
-chief justice was a former judge of the Supreme Court of New York; the
-other judges were retired officers of regiments who had fought in the
-war. The attorney-general was Jonathan Bliss, of Massachusetts; and the
-solicitor-general was Ward Chipman, the friend and correspondent of
-Edward Winslow. Winslow himself, whose charming letters throw such a
-flood of light on the settlement of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, was
-a member of the council. New Brunswick was indeed _par excellence_ the
-Loyalist province.
-
-[Illustration: THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON—BUILT 1787]
-
-The new governor arrived at Parrtown on November 21, 1784, and was
-immediately presented with an enthusiastic address of welcome by the
-inhabitants. They described themselves as ‘a number of oppressed and
-insulted Loyalists,’ and added that they had formerly been freemen,
-and again hoped to be so under his government. Next spring the governor
-granted to Parrtown incorporation as a city under the name of St John.
-The name Parrtown had been given, it appears, at the request of Governor
-Parr himself, who explained apologetically that the suggestion had arisen
-out of ‘female vanity’; and in view of Governor Parr’s unpopularity,
-the change of name was very welcome. At the same time, however, Colonel
-Carleton greatly offended the people of St John by removing the capital
-of the province up the river to St Anne’s, to which he gave the name
-Fredericktown (Fredericton) in honour of the Duke of York.
-
-On October 15, 1785, writs were issued for the election of members
-to serve in a general assembly. The province was divided into eight
-counties, among which were apportioned twenty-six members. The right to
-vote was given by Governor Carleton to all males of twenty-one years
-of age who had been three months in the province, the object of this
-very democratic franchise being to include in the voting list settlers
-who were clearing their lands, but had not yet received their grants.
-The elections were held in November, and lasted for fifteen days. They
-passed off without incident, except in the city of St John. There a
-struggle took place which throws a great deal of light on the bitterness
-of social feeling among the Loyalists. The inhabitants split into two
-parties, known as the Upper Cove and the Lower Cove. The Upper Cove
-represented the aristocratic element, and the Lower Cove the democratic.
-For some time class feeling had been growing; it had been aroused by the
-attempt of fifty-five gentlemen of New York to obtain for themselves,
-on account of their social standing and services during the war, grants
-of land in Nova Scotia of five thousand acres each; and it had been
-fanned into flame by the inequality in the size of the lots granted
-in St John itself. Unfortunately, among the six Upper Cove candidates
-in St John there were two officers of the government, Jonathan Bliss
-and Ward Chipman; and thus the struggle took on the appearance of one
-between government and opposition candidates. The election was bitterly
-contested, under the old method of open voting; and as it proceeded it
-became clear that the Lower Cove was polling a majority of the votes. The
-defeat of the government officers, it was felt, would be such a calamity
-that at the scrutiny Sheriff Oliver struck off over eighty votes, and
-returned the Upper Cove candidates. The election was protested, but the
-House of Assembly refused, on a technicality, to upset the election. A
-strangely ill-worded and ungrammatical petition to have the assembly
-dissolved was presented to the governor by the Lower Cove people, but
-Governor Carleton refused to interfere, and the Upper Cove candidates
-kept their seats. The incident created a great deal of indignation in St
-John, and Ward Chipman and Jonathan Bliss were not able for many years to
-obtain a majority in that riding.
-
-[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CARD USED IN THE FIRST NEW BRUNSWICK
-ELECTION, 1785]
-
-It is evident from these early records that, while there were members
-of the oldest and most famous families in British America among the
-Loyalists of the Thirteen Colonies, the majority of those who came to
-Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and especially to Upper Canada, were people
-of very humble origin. Of the settlers in Nova Scotia, Governor Parr
-expressed his regret ‘that there is not a sufficient proportion of men
-of education and abilities among the present adventurers.’ The election
-in St John was a sufficient evidence of the strength of the democratic
-element there; and their petition to Governor Carleton is a sufficient
-evidence of their illiteracy. Some of the settlers assumed pretensions
-to which they were not entitled. An amusing case is that of William
-Newton. This man had been the groom of the Honourable George Hanger, a
-major in the British Legion during the war. Having come to Nova Scotia,
-he began to pay court to a wealthy widow, and introduced himself to her
-by affirming ‘that he was particularly connected with the hono’ble Major
-Hanger, and that his circumstances were rather affluent, having served in
-a money-making department, and that he had left a considerable property
-behind him.’ The widow applied to Edward Winslow, who assured her that
-Mr Newton had indeed been connected—very closely—with the Honourable
-Major Hanger, and that he had left a large property behind him. ‘The
-nuptials were immediately celebrated with great pomp, and Mr Newton is at
-present,’ wrote Winslow, ‘a gentleman of consideration in Nova Scotia.’
-
-During 1785 and subsequent years, the work of settlement went on rapidly
-in New Brunswick. There was hardship and privation at first, and up to
-1792 some indigent settlers received rations from the government. But
-astonishing progress was made. ‘The new settlements of the Loyalists,’
-wrote Colonel Thomas Dundas, who visited New Brunswick in the winter of
-1786-87, ‘are in a thriving way.’ Apparently, however, he did not think
-highly of the industry of the disbanded soldiers, for he avowed that ‘rum
-and idle habits contracted during the war are much against them.’ But
-he paid a compliment to the half-pay officers. ‘The half-pay provincial
-officers,’ he wrote, ‘are valuable settlers, as they are enabled to live
-well and improve their lands.’
-
-It took some time for the province to settle down. Many who found their
-lands disappointing moved to other parts of the province; and after
-1790 numbers went to Upper Canada. But gradually the settlers adjusted
-themselves to their environment, and New Brunswick entered on that era of
-prosperity which has been hers ever since.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
-
-
-Not many Loyalists found their way to Prince Edward Island, or, as it was
-called at the time of the American Revolution, the Island of St John.
-Probably there were not many more than six hundred on the island at any
-one time. But the story of these immigrants forms a chapter in itself.
-Elsewhere the refugees were well and loyally treated. In Nova Scotia and
-Quebec the English officials strove to the best of their ability, which
-was perhaps not always great, to make provision for them. But in Prince
-Edward Island they were the victims of treachery and duplicity.
-
-Prince Edward Island was in 1783 owned by a number of large landed
-proprietors. When it became known that the British government intended
-to settle the Loyalists in Nova Scotia, these proprietors presented a
-petition to Lord North, declaring their desire to afford asylum to such
-as would settle on the island. To this end they offered to resign certain
-of their lands for colonization, on condition that the government abated
-the quit-rents. This petition was favourably received by the government,
-and a proclamation was issued promising lands to settlers in Prince
-Edward Island on terms similar to those granted to settlers in Nova
-Scotia and Quebec.
-
-Encouraged by the liberal terms held forth, a number of Loyalists went to
-the island direct from New York, and a number went later from Shelburne,
-disappointed by the prospects there. In June 1784 a muster of Loyalists
-on the island was taken, which showed a total of about three hundred and
-eighty persons, and during the remainder of the year a couple of hundred
-went from Shelburne. At the end of 1784, therefore, it is safe to assume
-that there were nearly six hundred on the island, or about one-fifth of
-the total population.
-
-These refugees found great difficulty in obtaining the grants of land
-promised to them. They were allowed to take up their residence on certain
-lands, being assured that their titles were secure; and then, after they
-had cleared the lands, erected buildings, planted orchards, and made
-other improvements, they were told that their titles lacked validity,
-and they were forced to move. Written title-deeds were withheld on every
-possible pretext, and when they were granted they were found to contain
-onerous conditions out of harmony with the promises made. The object of
-the proprietors, in inflicting these persecutions, seems to have been to
-force the settlers to become tenants instead of freeholders. Even Colonel
-Edmund Fanning, the Loyalist lieutenant-governor, was implicated in this
-conspiracy. Fanning was one of the proprietors in Township No. 50. The
-settlers in this township, being unable to obtain their grants, resolved
-to send a remonstrance to the British government, and chose as their
-representative one of their number who had known Lord Cornwallis during
-the war, hoping through him to obtain redress. This agent was on the
-point of leaving for England, when news of his intention reached Colonel
-Fanning. The ensuing result was as prompt as it was significant: within a
-week afterwards nearly all the Loyalists in Township No. 50 had obtained
-their grants.
-
-Others, however, did not have friends in high places, and were unable
-to obtain redress. The minutes of council which contained the records
-of many of the allotments were not entered in the regular Council Book,
-but were kept on loose sheets; and thus the unfortunate settlers were
-not able to prove by the Council Book that their lands had been allotted
-them. When the rough minutes were discovered years later, they were found
-to bear evidence, in erasures and the use of different inks, of having
-been tampered with.
-
-For seventy-five years the Loyalists continued to agitate for justice.
-As early as 1790 the island legislature passed an act empowering the
-governor to give grants to those who had not yet received them from the
-proprietors. But this measure did not entirely redress the grievances,
-and after a lapse of fifty years a petition of the descendants of the
-Loyalists led to further action in the matter. In 1840 a bill was passed
-by the House of Assembly granting relief to the Loyalists, but was
-thrown out by the Legislative Council. As late as 1860 the question was
-still troubling the island politics. In that year a land commission was
-appointed, which reported that there were Loyalists who still had claims
-on the local government, and recommended that free grants should be made
-to such as could prove that their fathers had been attracted to the
-island under promises which had never been fulfilled.
-
-Such is the unlovely story of how the Loyalists were persecuted in the
-Island of St John, under the British flag.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-THE LOYALISTS IN QUEBEC
-
-
-It was a tribute to the stability of British rule in the newly-won
-province of Quebec that at the very beginning of the Revolutionary War
-loyal refugees began to flock across the border. As early as June 2,
-1774, Colonel Christie, stationed at St Johns on the Richelieu, wrote
-to Sir Frederick Haldimand at Quebec notifying him of the arrival of
-immigrants; and it is interesting to note that at that early date he
-already complained of ‘their unreasonable expectations.’ In the years
-1775 and 1776 large bodies of persecuted Loyalists from the Mohawk
-valley came north with Sir John Johnson and Colonel Butler; and in these
-years was formed in Canada the first of the Loyalist regiments. It was
-not, however, until the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1778 that
-the full tide of immigration set in. Immediately thereafter Haldimand
-wrote to Lord George Germain, under date of October 14, 1778, reporting
-the arrival of ‘loyalists in great distress,’ seeking refuge from the
-revolted provinces. Haldimand lost no time in making provision for
-their reception. He established a settlement for them at Machiche, near
-Three Rivers, which he placed under the superintendence of a compatriot
-and a protégé of his named Conrad Gugy. The captains of militia in the
-neighbourhood were ordered to help build barracks for the refugees,
-provisions were secured from the merchants at Three Rivers, and
-everything in reason was done to make the unfortunates comfortable. By
-the autumn of 1778 there were in Canada, at Machiche and other places,
-more than one thousand refugees, men, women, and children, exclusive of
-those who had enlisted in the regiments. Including the troops, probably
-no less than three thousand had found their way to Canada.
-
-With the conclusion of peace came a great rush to the north. The
-resources of government were strained to the utmost to provide for
-the necessities of the thousands who flocked over the border-line.
-At Chambly, St Johns, Montreal, Sorel, Machiche, Quebec, officers of
-government were stationed to dole out supplies. At Quebec alone in
-March 1784 one thousand three hundred and thirty-eight ‘friends of
-government’ were being fed at the public expense. At Sorel a settlement
-was established similar to that at Machiche. The seigneury of Sorel had
-been purchased by the government in 1780 for military purposes, and when
-the war was over it was turned into a Loyalist reserve, on which huts
-were erected and provisions dispensed. In all, there must have been
-nearly seven thousand Loyalists in the province of Quebec in the winter
-of 1783-84.
-
-Complete details are lacking with regard to the temporary encampments
-in which the Loyalists were hived; but there are evidences that they
-were not entirely satisfied with the manner in which they were looked
-after. One of the earliest of Canadian county histories,[1] a book partly
-based on traditionary sources, has some vague tales about the cruelty
-and malversation practised by a Frenchman under whom the Loyalists
-were placed at ‘Mishish.’ ‘Mishish’ is obviously a phonetic spelling
-of Machiche, and ‘the Frenchman’ is probably Conrad Gugy. Some letters
-in the Dominion Archives point in the same direction. Under date of
-April 29, the governor’s secretary writes to Stephen De Lancey, the
-inspector of the Loyalists, referring to ‘the uniform discontent of the
-Loyalists at Machiche.’ The discontent, he explains, is excited by a few
-ill-disposed persons. ‘The sickness they complain of has been common
-throughout the province, and should have lessened rather than increased
-the consumption of provisions.’ A Loyalist who writes to the governor,
-putting his complaints on paper, is assured that ‘His Excellency is
-anxious to do everything in his power for the Loyalists, but if what
-he can do does not come up to the expectation of him and those he
-represents, His Excellency gives the fullest permission to them to seek
-redress in such manner as they shall think best.’
-
- [1] _Dundas, or a Sketch of Canadian History_, by James Croil,
- Montreal, 1861.
-
-What degree of justice there was in the complaints of the refugees it
-is now difficult to determine. No doubt some of them were confirmed
-grumblers, and many of them had what Colonel Christie called
-‘unreasonable expectations.’ Nothing is more certain than that Sir
-Frederick Haldimand spared no effort to accommodate the Loyalists. On the
-other hand, it would be rash to assert that in the confusion which then
-reigned there were no grievances of which they could justly complain.
-
-In the spring and summer of 1784 the great majority of the refugees
-within the limits of the province of Quebec were removed to what was
-afterwards known as Upper Canada. But some remained, and swelled the
-number of the ‘old subjects’ in the French province. Considerable
-settlements were made at two places. One of these was Sorel, where
-the seigneury that had been bought by the crown was granted out to
-the new-comers in lots; the other was in the Gaspé peninsula, on the
-shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence and of Chaleur Bay. The seigneury
-of Sorel was well peopled, for each grantee received only sixty acres
-and a town lot, taking the rest of his allotment in some of the newer
-settlements. The settlement in the Gaspé peninsula was more sparse; the
-chief centre of population was the tiny fishing village of Paspebiac.
-In addition to these settlements, some of the exiles took up land on
-private seigneuries; these, however, were not many, for the government
-discouraged the practice, and refused supplies to all who did not settle
-on the king’s land. At the present time, of all these Loyalist groups
-in the province of Quebec scarce a trace remains: they have all been
-swallowed up in the surrounding French population.
-
-The Eastern Townships in the province of Quebec were not settled by the
-United Empire Loyalists. In 1783 Sir Frederick Haldimand set his face
-like flint against any attempt on the part of the Loyalists to settle
-the lands lying along the Vermont frontier. He feared that a settlement
-there would prove a permanent thorn in the flesh of the Americans, and
-might lead to much trouble and friction. He wished that these lands
-should be left unsettled for a time, and that, in the end, they should
-be settled by French Canadians ‘as an antidote to the restless New
-England population.’ Some of the more daring Loyalists, in spite of the
-prohibition of the governor, ventured to settle on Missisquoi Bay. When
-the governor heard of it, he sent orders to the officer commanding at
-St Johns that they should be removed as soon as the season should admit
-of it; and instructions were given that if any other Loyalists settled
-there, their houses were to be destroyed. By these drastic means the
-government kept the Eastern Townships a wilderness until after 1791,
-when the townships were granted out in free and common socage, and
-American settlers began to flock in. But, as will be explained, these
-later settlers have no just claim to the appellation of United Empire
-Loyalists.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS
-
-
-Sir Frederick Haldimand offered the Loyalists a wide choice of places
-in which to settle. He was willing to make land grants on Chaleur Bay,
-at Gaspé, on the north shore of the St Lawrence above Montreal, on the
-Bay of Quinté, at Niagara, or along the Detroit river; and if none of
-these places was suitable, he offered to transport to Nova Scotia or Cape
-Breton those who wished to go thither. At all these places settlements
-of Loyalists sprang up. That at Niagara grew to considerable importance,
-and became after the division of the province in 1791 the capital of
-Upper Canada. But by far the largest settlement was that which Haldimand
-planned along the north shore of the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario between
-the western boundary of the government of Quebec and Cataraqui (now
-Kingston), east of the Bay of Quinté. Here the great majority of the
-Loyalists in Canada were concentrated.
-
-As soon as Haldimand received instructions from England with regard
-to the granting of the lands he gave orders to Major Samuel Holland,
-surveyor-general of the king’s territories in North America, to proceed
-with the work of making the necessary surveys. Major Holland, taking with
-him as assistants Lieutenants Kotté and Sutherland and deputy-surveyors
-John Collins and Patrick McNish, set out in the early autumn of 1783, and
-before the winter closed in he had completed the survey of five townships
-bordering on the Bay of Quinté. The next spring his men returned, and
-surveyed eight townships along the north bank of the St Lawrence, between
-the Bay of Quinté and the provincial boundary. These townships are now
-distinguished by names, but in 1783-84 they were designated merely
-by numbers; thus for many years the old inhabitants referred to the
-townships of Osnaburg, Williamsburg, and Matilda, for instance, as the
-‘third town,’ the ‘fourth town,’ and the ‘fifth town.’ The surveys were
-made in great haste, and, it is to be feared, not with great care; for
-some tedious lawsuits arose out of the discrepancies contained in them,
-and a generation later Robert Gourlay wrote that ‘one of the present
-surveyors informed me that in running new lines over a great extent of
-the province, he found spare room for a whole township in the midst of
-those laid out at an early period.’ Each township was subdivided into
-lots of two hundred acres each, and a town-site was selected in each case
-which was subdivided into town lots.
-
-[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK HALDIMAND
-
-After a contemporary painting]
-
-The task of transporting the settlers from their camping-places at Sorel,
-Machiche, and St Johns to their new homes up the St Lawrence was one
-of some magnitude. General Haldimand was not able himself to oversee
-the work; but he appointed Sir John Johnson as superintendent, and the
-work of settlement went on under Johnson’s care. On a given day the
-Loyalists were ordered to strike camp, and proceed in a body to the new
-settlements. Any who remained behind without sufficient excuse had their
-rations stopped. Bateaux took the settlers up the St Lawrence, and the
-various detachments were disembarked at their respective destinations. It
-had been decided that the settlers should be placed on the land as far as
-possible according to the corps in which they had served during the war,
-and that care should be taken to have the Protestant and Roman Catholic
-members of a corps settled separately. It was this arrangement which
-brought about the grouping of Protestant and Roman Catholic Scottish
-Highlanders in Glengarry. The first battalion of the King’s Royal
-Regiment of New York was settled on the first five townships west of the
-provincial boundary. This was Sir John Johnson’s regiment, and most of
-its members were his Scottish dependants from the Mohawk valley. The next
-three townships were settled by part of Jessup’s Corps, an offshoot of
-Sir John Johnson’s regiment. Of the Cataraqui townships the first was
-settled by a band of New York Loyalists, many of them of Dutch or German
-extraction, commanded by Captain Michael Grass. On the second were part
-of Jessup’s Corps; on the third and fourth were a detachment of the
-second battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, which had been
-stationed at Oswego across the lake at the close of the war, a detachment
-of Rogers’s Rangers, and a party of New York Loyalists under Major Van
-Alstine. The parties commanded by Grass and Van Alstine had come by ship
-from New York to Quebec after the evacuation of New York in 1783. On the
-fifth township were various detachments of disbanded regular troops, and
-even a handful of disbanded German mercenaries.
-
-As soon as the settlers had been placed on the townships to which they
-had been assigned, they received their allotments of land. The surveyor
-was the land agent, and the allotments were apportioned by each applicant
-drawing a lot out of a hat. This democratic method of allotting lands
-roused the indignation of some of the officers who had settled with their
-men. They felt that they should have been given the front lots, unmindful
-of the fact that their grants as officers were from five to ten times as
-large as the grants which their men received. Their protests, contained
-in a letter of Captain Grass to the governor, roused Haldimand to a
-display of warmth to which he was as a rule a stranger. Captain Grass and
-his associates, he wrote, were to get no special privileges, ‘the most
-of them who came into the province with him being, in fact, mechanics,
-only removed from one situation to practise their trade in another. Mr
-Grass should, therefore, think himself very well off to draw lots in
-common with the Loyalists.’ A good deal of difficulty arose also from the
-fact that many allotments were inferior to the rest from an agricultural
-point of view; but difficulties of this sort were adjusted by Johnson and
-Holland on the spot.
-
-By 1784 nearly all the settlers were destitute and completely dependent
-on the generosity of the British government. They had no effects; they
-had no money; and in many cases they were sorely in need of clothes. The
-way in which Sir Frederick Haldimand came to their relief is deserving
-of high praise. If he had adhered to the letter of his instructions from
-England, the position of the Loyalists would have been a most unenviable
-one. Repeatedly, however, Haldimand took on his own shoulders the
-responsibility of ignoring or disobeying the instructions from England,
-and trusted to chance that his protests would prevent the government from
-repudiating his actions. When the home government, for instance, ordered
-a reduction of the rations, Haldimand undertook to continue them in full;
-and fortunately for him the home government, on receipt of his protest,
-rescinded the order.
-
-The settlers on the Upper St Lawrence and the Bay of Quinté did not
-perhaps fare as well as those in Nova Scotia, or even the Mohawk Indians
-who settled on the Grand river. They did not receive lumber for building
-purposes, and ‘bricks for the inside of their chimneys, and a little
-assistance of nails,’ as did the former; nor did they receive ploughs
-and church-bells, as did the latter. For building lumber they had to
-wait until saw-mills were constructed; instead of ploughs they had at
-first to use hoes and spades, and there were not quite enough hoes and
-spades to go round. Still, they did not fare badly. When the difficulty
-of transporting things up the St Lawrence is remembered, it is remarkable
-that they obtained as much as they did. In the first place they were
-supplied with clothes for three years, or until they were able to provide
-clothes for themselves. These consisted of coarse cloth for trousers
-and Indian blankets for coats. Boots they made out of skins or heavy
-cloth. Tools for building were given them: to each family were given
-an ax and a hand-saw, though unfortunately the axes were short-handled
-ship’s axes, ill-adapted to cutting in the forest; to each group of two
-families were allotted a whip-saw and a cross-cut saw; and to each group
-of five families was supplied a set of tools, containing chisels, augers,
-draw-knives, etc. To each group of five families was also allotted ‘one
-firelock ... intended for the messes, the pigeon and wildfowl season’;
-but later on a firelock was supplied to every head of a family.
-Haldimand went to great trouble in obtaining seed-wheat for the settlers,
-sending agents down even into Vermont and the Mohawk valley to obtain
-all that was to be had; he declined, however, to supply stock for the
-farms, and although eventually he obtained some cattle, there were not
-nearly enough cows to go round. In many cases the soldiers were allowed
-the loan of the military tents; and everything was done to have saw-mills
-and grist-mills erected in the most convenient places with the greatest
-possible dispatch. In the meantime small portable grist-mills, worked by
-hand, were distributed among the settlers.
-
-Among the papers relating to the Loyalists in the Canadian Archives there
-is an abstract of the numbers of the settlers in the five townships
-at Cataraqui and the eight townships on the St Lawrence. There were
-altogether 1568 men, 626 women, 1492 children, and 90 servants, making a
-total of 3776 persons. These were, of course, only the original settlers.
-As time went on others were added. Many of the soldiers had left their
-families in the States behind them, and these families now hastened
-to cross the border. A proclamation had been issued by the British
-government inviting those Loyalists who still remained in the States to
-assemble at certain places along the frontier, namely, at Isle aux Noix,
-at Sackett’s Harbour, at Oswego, and at Niagara. The favourite route was
-the old trail from the Mohawk valley to Oswego, where was stationed a
-detachment of the 34th regiment. From Oswego these refugees crossed to
-Cataraqui. ‘Loyalists,’ wrote an officer at Cataraqui in the summer of
-1784, ‘are coming in daily across the lake.’ To accommodate these new
-settlers three more townships had to be mapped out at the west end of the
-Bay of Quinté.
-
-For the first few years the Cataraqui settlers had a severe struggle
-for existence. Most of them arrived in 1784, too late to attempt to sow
-fall wheat; and it was several seasons before their crops became nearly
-adequate for food. The difficulties of transportation up the St Lawrence
-rendered the arrival of supplies irregular and uncertain. Cut off as they
-were from civilization by the St Lawrence rapids, they were in a much
-less advantageous position than the great majority of the Nova Scotia
-and New Brunswick settlers, who were situated near the sea-coast. They
-had no money, and as the government refused to send them specie, they
-were compelled to fall back on barter as a means of trade, with the
-result that all trade was local and trivial. In the autumn of 1787 the
-crops failed, and in 1788 famine stalked through the land. There are many
-legends about what was known as ‘the hungry year.’ If we are to believe
-local tradition, some of the settlers actually died of starvation. In the
-family papers of one family is to be found a story about an old couple
-who were saved from starvation only by the pigeons which they were able
-to knock over. A member of another family testifies: ‘We had the luxury
-of a cow which the family brought with them, and had it not been for this
-domestic boon, all would have perished in the year of scarcity.’ Two
-hundred acre lots were sold for a few pounds of flour. A valuable cow, in
-one case, was sold for eight bushels of potatoes; a three-year-old horse
-was exchanged for half a hundredweight of flour. Bran was used for making
-cakes; and leeks, buds of trees, and even leaves, were ground into food.
-
-The summer of 1789, however, brought relief to the settlers, and though,
-for many years, comforts and even necessaries were scarce, yet after
-1791, the year in which the new settlements were erected into the
-province of Upper Canada, it may be said that most of the settlers
-had been placed on their feet. The soil was fruitful; communication
-and transportation improved; and metallic currency gradually found
-its way into the settlements. When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the
-lieutenant-governor, passed through the country in 1792, she was struck
-by the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers from the
-Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the wheat. ‘I observed on my
-way thither,’ she says in her diary, ‘that the wheat appeared finer than
-any I have seen in England, and totally free from weeds.’ And a few
-months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the same way, wrote:
-‘In so infant a settlement, it would have been irrational to expect that
-abundance which bursts the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more
-cultivated countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance which
-indicated that with economy and industry, there would be enough.’
-
-Next in size to the settlements at Cataraqui and on the Upper St Lawrence
-was the settlement at Niagara. During the war Niagara had been a haven
-of refuge for the Loyalists of Pennsylvania and the frontier districts,
-just as Oswego and St Johns had been havens of refuge for the Loyalists
-of northern and western New York. As early as 1776 there arrived at
-Fort George, Niagara, in a starving condition, five women and thirty-six
-children, bearing names which are still to be found in the Niagara
-peninsula. From that date until the end of the war refugees continued
-to come in. Many of these refugees were the families of the men and
-officers of the Loyalist troops stationed at Niagara. On September 27,
-1783, for instance, the officer commanding at Niagara reports the arrival
-from Schenectady of the wives of two officers of Butler’s Rangers,
-with a number of children. Some of these people went down the lake to
-Montreal; but others remained at the post, and ‘squatted’ on the land.
-In 1780 Colonel Butler reports to Haldimand that four or five families
-have settled and built houses, and he requests that they be given seed
-early in the spring. In 1781 we know that a Loyalist named Robert Land
-had squatted on Burlington Bay, at the head of Lake Ontario. In 1783
-Lieutenant Tinling was sent to Niagara to survey lots, and Sergeant Brass
-of the 84th was sent to build a saw-mill and a grist-mill. At the same
-time Butler’s Rangers, who were stationed at the fort, were disbanded;
-and a number of them were induced to take up land. They took up land on
-the west side of the river, because, although, according to the terms of
-peace, Fort George was not given up by the British until 1796, the river
-was to constitute the boundary between the two countries. A return of the
-rise and progress of the settlement made in May 1784 shows a total of
-forty-six settlers (that is, heads of families), with forty-four houses
-and twenty barns. The return makes it clear that cultivation had been
-going on for some time. There were 713 acres cleared, 123 acres sown in
-wheat, and 342 acres waiting to be sown; and the farms were very well
-stocked, there being an average of about three horses and four or five
-cows to each settler.
-
-With regard to the settlement at Detroit, there is not much evidence
-available. It was Haldimand’s intention at first to establish a large
-settlement there, but the difficulties of communication doubtless proved
-to be insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler’s Rangers
-settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied for and received a
-grant of land on which he made a settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we
-find Captain Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land and
-houses they occupied. In 1783 the commanding officer at Detroit reported
-the arrival from Red Creek of two men, ‘one a Girty, the other McCarty,’
-who had come to see what encouragement there was to settle under the
-British government. They asserted that several hundred more would be glad
-to come if sufficient inducements were offered them, as they saw before
-them where they were nothing but persecution. In 1784 Jehu Hay, the
-British lieutenant-governor of Detroit, sent in lists of men living near
-Fort Pitt who were anxious to settle under the British government if they
-could get lands, most of them being men who had served in the Highland
-and 60th regiments. But it is safe to assume that no large number of
-these ever settled near Detroit, for when Hay arrived in Detroit in the
-summer of 1784, he found only one Loyalist at the post itself. There
-had been for more than a generation a settlement of French Canadians at
-Detroit; but it was not until after 1791 that the English element became
-at all considerable.
-
-It has been estimated that in the country above Montreal in 1783 there
-were ten thousand Loyalists, and that by 1791 this number had increased
-to twenty-five thousand. These figures are certainly too large.
-Pitt’s estimate of the population of Upper Canada in 1791 was only
-ten thousand. This is probably much nearer the mark. The overwhelming
-majority of these people were of very humble origin. Comparatively few
-of the half-pay officers settled above Montreal before 1791; and most
-of these were, as Haldimand said, ‘mechanics, only removed from one
-situation to practise their trade in another.’ Major Van Alstine, it
-appears, was a blacksmith before he came to Canada. That many of the
-Loyalists were illiterate is evident from the testimony of the Rev.
-William Smart, a Presbyterian clergyman who came to Upper Canada in 1811:
-‘There were but few of the U. E. Loyalists who possessed a complete
-education. He was personally acquainted with many, especially along the
-St Lawrence and Bay of Quinté, and by no means were all educated, or men
-of judgment; even the half-pay officers, many of them, had but a limited
-education.’ The aristocrats of the ‘Family Compact’ party did not come to
-Canada with the Loyalists of 1783; they came, in most cases, after 1791,
-some of them from Britain, such as Bishop Strachan, and some of them from
-New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, such as the Jarvises and the Robinsons.
-This fact is one which serves to explain a great deal in Upper Canadian
-history.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-COMPENSATION AND HONOUR
-
-
-Throughout the war the British government had constantly granted relief
-and compensation to Loyalists who had fled to England. In the autumn
-of 1782 the treasury was paying out to them, on account of losses or
-services, an annual amount of £40,280 over and above occasional payments
-of a particular or extraordinary nature amounting to £17,000 or £18,000
-annually. When peace had been concluded, and it became clear that the
-Americans had no intention of making restitution to the Loyalists, the
-British government determined to put the payments for their compensation
-on a more satisfactory basis.
-
-For this purpose the Coalition Government of Fox and North appointed in
-July 1783 a royal commission ‘to inquire into the losses and services
-of all such persons who have suffered in their rights, properties,
-and professions during the late unhappy dissensions in America, in
-consequence of their loyalty to His Majesty and attachment to the British
-Government.’ A full account of the proceedings of the commission is to
-be found in the _Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry into the
-Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists_, published in
-London in 1815 by one of the commissioners, John Eardley Wilmot. The
-commission was originally appointed to sit for only two years; but the
-task which confronted it was so great that it was found necessary several
-times to renew the act under which it was appointed; and not until
-1790 was the long inquiry brought to an end. It was intended at first
-that the claims of the men in the Loyalist regiments should be sent in
-through their officers; and Sir John Johnson, for instance, was asked to
-transmit the claims of the Loyalists settled in Canada. But it was found
-that this method did not provide sufficient guarantee against fraudulent
-and exorbitant claims; and eventually members of the commission were
-compelled to go in person to New York, Nova Scotia, and Canada.
-
-The delay in concluding the work of the commission caused great
-indignation. A tract which appeared in London in 1788 entitled
-_The Claim of, the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained upon
-Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice_ drew a black picture of
-the results of the delay:
-
- It is well known that this delay of justice has produced the
- most melancholy and shocking events. A number of sufferers have
- been driven into insanity and become their own destroyers,
- leaving behind them their helpless widows and orphans to
- subsist upon the cold charity of strangers. Others have been
- sent to cultivate the wilderness for their subsistence,
- without having the means, and compelled through want to throw
- themselves on the mercy of the American States, and the charity
- of former friends, to support the life which might have been
- made comfortable by the money long since due by the British
- Government; and many others with their families are barely
- subsisting upon a temporary allowance from Government, a mere
- pittance when compared with the sum due them.
-
-Complaints were also made about the methods of the inquiry. The claimant
-was taken into a room alone with the commissioners, was asked to submit
-a written and sworn statement as to his losses and services, and was
-then cross-examined both with regard to his own losses and those of his
-fellow claimants. This cross-questioning was freely denounced as an
-‘inquisition.’
-
-Grave inconvenience was doubtless caused in many cases by the delay of
-the commissioners in making their awards. But on the other hand it should
-be remembered that the commissioners had before them a portentous task.
-They had to examine between four thousand and five thousand claims. In
-most of these the amount of detail to be gone through was considerable,
-and the danger of fraud was great. There was the difficulty also of
-determining just what losses should be compensated. The rule which was
-followed was that claims should be allowed only for losses of property
-through loyalty, for loss of offices held before the war, and for loss
-of actual professional income. No account was taken of lands bought or
-improved during the war, of uncultivated lands, of property mortgaged
-to its full value or with defective titles, of damage done by British
-troops, or of forage taken by them. Losses due to the fall in the value
-of the provincial paper money were thrown out, as were also expenses
-incurred while in prison or while living in New York city. Even losses
-in trade and labour were discarded. It will be seen that to apply these
-rules to thousands of detailed claims, all of which had to be verified,
-was not the work of a few days, or even months.
-
-It must be remembered, too, that during the years from 1783 to 1790 the
-British government was doing a great deal for the Loyalists in other
-ways. Many of the better class received offices under the crown. Sir John
-Johnson was appointed superintendent of the Loyalists in Canada, and
-then superintendent of Indian Affairs; Colonel Edmund Fanning was made
-lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia; Ward Chipman became solicitor-general
-of New Brunswick. The officers of the Loyalist regiments were put on
-half-pay; and there is evidence that many were allowed thus to rank as
-half-pay officers who had no real claim to the title. ‘Many,’ said the
-Rev. William Smart of Brockville, ‘were placed on the list of officers,
-not because they had seen service, but as the most certain way of
-compensating them for losses sustained in the Rebellion’; and Haldimand
-himself complained that ‘there is no end to it if every man that comes
-in is to be considered and paid as an officer.’ Then every Loyalist who
-wished to do so received a grant of land. The rule was that each field
-officer should receive 5000 acres, each captain 3000, each subaltern
-2000, and each non-commissioned officer and private 200 acres. This rule
-was not uniformly observed, and there was great irregularity in the
-size of the grants. Major Van Alstine, for instance, received only 1200
-acres. But in what was afterwards Upper Canada, 3,200,000 acres were
-granted out to Loyalists before 1787. And in addition to all this, the
-British government clothed and fed and housed the Loyalists until they
-were able to provide for themselves. There were those in Nova Scotia
-who were receiving rations as late as 1792. What all this must have
-cost the government during the years following 1783 it is difficult to
-compute. Including the cost of surveys, official salaries, the building
-of saw-mills and grist-mills, and such things, the figures must have run
-up to several millions of pounds.
-
-When it is remembered that all this had been already done, it will be
-admitted to be a proof of the generosity of the British government that
-the total of the claims allowed by the royal commission amounted to
-£3,112,455. The grants varied in size from £10, the compensation paid
-to a common soldier, to £44,500, the amount paid to Sir John Johnson.
-The total outlay on the part of Great Britain, both during and after the
-war, on account of the Loyalists, must have amounted to not less than
-£6,000,000, exclusive of the value of the lands assigned.
-
-With the object possibly of assuaging the grievances of which the
-Loyalists complained in connection with the proceedings of the royal
-commission, Lord Dorchester (as Sir Guy Carleton was by that time
-styled) proposed in 1789 ‘to put a Marke of Honor upon the families who
-had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard
-in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.’ It was
-therefore resolved that all Loyalists of that description were ‘to be
-distinguished by the letters U.E. affixed to their names, alluding to
-their great principle, the unity of the empire.’ The land boards were
-ordered to preserve a registry of all such persons, ‘to the end that
-their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers,’ and that
-their sons and daughters, on coming of age, might receive grants of
-two hundred acre lots. Unfortunately, the land boards carried out
-these instructions in a very half-hearted manner, and when Colonel John
-Graves Simcoe became lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, he found the
-regulation a dead letter. He therefore revived it in a proclamation
-issued at York (now Toronto), on April 6, 1796, which directed the
-magistrates to ascertain under oath and to register the names of all
-those who by reason of their loyalty to the Empire were entitled to
-special distinction and grants of land. A list was compiled from the land
-board registers, from the provision lists and muster lists, and from the
-registrations made upon oath, which was known as the ‘Old U. E. List’;
-and it is a fact often forgotten that no one, the names of some of whose
-ancestors are not inscribed in that list, has the right to describe
-himself as a United Empire Loyalist.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-THE AMERICAN MIGRATION
-
-
-From the first the problem of governing the settlements above Montreal
-perplexed the authorities. It was very early proposed to erect them into
-a separate province, as New Brunswick had been erected into a separate
-province. But Lord Dorchester was opposed to any such arrangement. ‘It
-appears to me,’ he wrote to Lord Sydney, ‘that the western settlements
-are as yet unprepared for any organization superior to that of a county.’
-In 1787, therefore, the country west of Montreal was divided into four
-districts, for a time named Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau, and Hesse.
-Lunenburg stretched from the western boundary of the province of Quebec
-to the Gananoqui; Mecklenburg, from the Gananoqui to the Trent, flowing
-into the Bay of Quinté; Nassau, from the Trent to a line drawn due north
-from Long Point on Lake Erie; and Hesse, from this line to Detroit. We
-do not know who was responsible for inflicting these names on a new
-and unoffending country. Perhaps they were thought a compliment to the
-Hanoverian ruler of England. Fortunately they were soon dropped, and the
-names Eastern, Midland, Home, and Western were substituted.
-
-This division of the settlements proved only temporary. It left the
-Loyalists under the arbitrary system of government set up in Quebec
-by the Quebec Act of 1774, under which they enjoyed no representative
-institutions whatever. It was not long before petitions began to pour in
-from them asking that they should be granted a representative assembly.
-Undoubtedly Lord Dorchester had underestimated the desire among them for
-representative institutions. In 1791, therefore, the country west of the
-Ottawa river, with the exception of a triangle of land at the junction
-of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence, was erected by the Constitutional
-Act into a separate province, with the name of Upper Canada; and this
-province was granted a representative assembly of fifteen members.
-
-The lieutenant-governor appointed for the new province was Colonel John
-Graves Simcoe. During the war Colonel Simcoe had been the commanding
-officer of the Queen’s Rangers, which had been largely composed of
-Loyalists, and he was therefore not unfitted to govern the new province.
-He was theoretically under the control of Lord Dorchester at Quebec; but
-his relations with Dorchester were somewhat strained, and he succeeded
-in making himself virtually independent in his western jurisdiction.
-Though he seemed phlegmatic, he possessed a vigorous and enterprising
-disposition, and he planned great things for Upper Canada. He explored
-the country in search of the best site for a capital; and it is
-interesting to know that he had such faith in the future of Upper Canada
-that he actually contemplated placing the capital in what was then the
-virgin wilderness about the river Thames. He inaugurated a policy of
-building roads and improving communications which showed great foresight;
-and he entered upon an immigration propaganda, by means of proclamations
-advertising free land grants, which brought a great increase of
-population to the province.
-
-[Illustration: JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE
-
-From the bust in Exeter Cathedral]
-
-Simcoe believed that there were still in the United States after 1791
-many people who had remained loyal at heart to Great Britain, and who
-were profoundly dissatisfied with their lot under the new American
-government. It was his object to attract these people to Upper Canada
-by means of his proclamations; and there is no doubt that he was partly
-successful. But he also attracted many who had no other motive in coming
-to Canada than their desire to obtain free land grants, and whose
-attachment to the British crown was of the most recent origin. These
-people were freely branded by the original settlers as ‘Americans’;
-and there is no doubt that in many cases the name expressed their real
-sympathies.
-
-The War of the Revolution had hardly been brought to a conclusion when
-some of the Americans showed a tendency to migrate into Canada. In 1783,
-when the American Colonel Willet was attempting an attack on the British
-garrison at Oswego, American traders, with an impudence which was superb,
-were arriving at Niagara. In 1784 some rebels who had attempted to pose
-as Loyalists were ejected from the settlements at Cataraqui. And after
-Simcoe began to advertise free land grants to all who would take the
-oath of allegiance to King George, hundreds of Americans flocked across
-the border. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld, a French _émigré_ who travelled
-through Upper Canada in 1795, and who has given us the best account of
-the province at that time, asserted that there were in Upper Canada many
-who ‘falsely profess an attachment to the British monarch and curse the
-Government of the Union for the mere purpose of getting possession of
-the lands.’ ‘We met in this excursion,’ says La Rochefoucauld in another
-place, ‘an American family who, with some oxen, cows, and sheep, were
-emigrating to Canada. “We come,” said they, “to the governor,” whom they
-did not know, “to see whether he will give us land.” “Aye, aye,” the
-governor replied, “you are tired of the federal government; you like not
-any longer to have so many kings; you wish again for your old father”
-(it is thus the governor calls the British monarch when he speaks with
-Americans); “you are perfectly right; come along, we love such good
-Royalists as you are; we will give you land.”’
-
-Other testimony is not lacking. Writing in 1799 Richard Cartwright said,
-‘It has so happened that a great portion of the population of that part
-of the province which extends from the head of the Bay of Kenty upwards
-is composed of persons who have evidently no claim to the appellation of
-Loyalists.’ In some districts it was a cause of grievance that persons
-from the States entered the province, petitioned for lands, took the
-necessary oaths, and, having obtained possession of the land, resold
-it, pocketed the money, and returned to build up the American Union. As
-late as 1816 a letter appeared in the Kingston _Gazette_ in which the
-complaint is made that ‘people who have come into the country from the
-States, marry into a family, and obtain a lot of wild land, get John
-Ryder to move the landmarks, and instead of a wild lot, take by force a
-fine house and barn and orchard, and a well-cultivated farm, and turn the
-old Tory (as he is called) out of his house, and all his labor for thirty
-years.’
-
-Never at any other time perhaps have conditions been so favourable in
-Canada for land-grabbing and land-speculation as they were then. Owing to
-the large amount of land granted to absentee owners, and to the policy
-of free land grants announced by Simcoe, land was sold at a very low
-price. In some cases two hundred acre lots were sold for a gallon of rum.
-In 1791 Sir William Pullency, an English speculator, bought 1,500,000
-acres of land in Upper Canada at one shilling an acre, and sold 700,000
-acres later for an average of eight shillings an acre. Under these
-circumstances it was not surprising that many Americans, with their
-shrewd business instincts, flocked into the country.
-
-It is clear, then, that a large part of the immigration which took place
-under Simcoe was not Loyalist in its character. From this, it must not
-be understood that the new-comers were not good settlers. Even Richard
-Cartwright confessed that they had ‘resources in themselves which other
-people are usually strangers to.’ They compared very favourably with the
-Loyalists who came from England and the Maritime Provinces, who were
-described by Cartwright as ‘idle and profligate.’ The great majority
-of the American settlers became loyal subjects of the British crown;
-and it was only when the American army invaded Canada in 1812, and when
-William Lyon Mackenzie made a push for independence in 1837, that the
-non-Loyalist character of some of the early immigration became apparent.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-The Loyalist in his New Home
-
-
-The social history of the United Empire Loyalists was not greatly
-different from that of other pioneer settlers in the Canadian forest.
-Their homes were such as could have been seen until recently in many of
-the outlying parts of the country. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick some
-of the better class of settlers were able to put up large and comfortable
-wooden houses, some of which are still standing. But even there most of
-them had to be content with primitive quarters. Edward Winslow was not a
-poor man, as poverty was reckoned in those days. Yet he lived in rather
-meagre style. He described his house at Granville, opposite Annapolis, as
-being ‘almost as large as my log house, divided into two rooms, where we
-are snug as pokers.’ Two years later, after he had made additions to it,
-he proposed advertising it for sale in the following terms: ‘That elegant
-House now occupied by the Honourable E. W., one of His Majesty’s Council
-for the Province of New Brunswick, consisting of four beautiful Rooms on
-the first Floor, highly finished. Also two spacious-lodging chambers in
-the second story—a capacious dry cellar with arches &c. &c. &c.’ In Upper
-Canada, owing to the difficulty of obtaining building materials, the
-houses of the half-pay officers were even less pretentious. A traveller
-passing through the country about Johnstown in 1792 described Sir John
-Johnson’s house as ‘a small country lodge, neat, but as the grounds are
-only beginning to be cleared, there was nothing of interest.’
-
-The home of the average Loyalist was a log-cabin. Sometimes the cabin
-contained one room, sometimes two. Its dimensions were as a rule no
-more than fourteen feet by eighteen feet, and sometimes ten by fifteen.
-The roofs were constructed of bark or small hollowed basswood logs,
-overlapping one another like tiles. The windows were as often as not
-covered not with glass, but with oiled paper. The chimneys were built
-of sticks and clay, or rough unmortared stones, since bricks were not
-procurable; sometimes there was no chimney, and the smoke was allowed
-to find its way out through a hole in the bark roof. Where it was
-impossible to obtain lumber, the doors were made of pieces of timber
-split into rough boards; and in some cases the hinges and latches were
-made of wood. These old log cabins, with the chinks between the logs
-filled in with clay and moss, were still to be seen standing in many
-parts of the country as late as fifty years ago. Though primitive, they
-seem to have been not uncomfortable; and many of the old settlers clung
-to them long after they could have afforded to build better. This was
-doubtless partly due to the fact that log-houses were exempt from the
-taxation laid on frame, brick, and stone structures.
-
-A few of the Loyalists succeeded in bringing with them to Canada some
-sticks of furniture or some family heirlooms. Here and there a family
-would possess an ancient spindle, a pair of curiously-wrought fire-dogs,
-or a quaint pair of hand-bellows. But these relics of a former life
-merely served to accentuate the rudeness of the greater part of the
-furniture of the settlers. Chairs, benches, tables, beds, chests, were
-fashioned by hand from the rough wood. The descendant of one family has
-described how the family dinner-table was a large stump, hewn flat on
-top, standing in the middle of the floor. The cooking was done at the
-open fireplace; it was not until well on in the nineteenth century that
-stoves came into common use in Canada.
-
-The clothing of the settlers was of the most varied description. Here
-and there was one who had brought with him the tight knee-breeches and
-silver-buckled shoes of polite society. But many had arrived with only
-what was on their backs; and these soon found their garments, no matter
-how carefully darned and patched, succumb to the effects of time and
-labour. It was not long before the settlers learnt from the Indians the
-art of making clothing out of deer-skin. Trousers made of this material
-were found both comfortable and durable. ‘A gentleman who recently died
-in Sophiasburg at an advanced age, remembered to have worn a pair for
-twelve years, being repaired occasionally, and at the end they were
-sold for two dollars and a half.’ Petticoats for women were also made
-of deer-skin. ‘My grandmother,’ says one descendant, ‘made all sorts
-of useful dresses with these skins, which were most comfortable for a
-country life, and for going through the bush [since they] could not be
-torn by the branches.’ There were, of course, some articles of clothing
-which could not readily be made of leather; and very early the settlers
-commenced growing flax and raising sheep for their wool. Home-made linen
-and clothing of linsey-woolsey were used in the settlements by high and
-low alike. It was not until the close of the eighteenth century that
-articles of apparel, other than those made at home of flax and wool,
-were easily obtainable. A calico dress was a great luxury. Few daughters
-expected to have one until it was bought for their wedding-dress. Great
-efforts were always made to array the bride in fitting costume; and
-sometimes a dress, worn by the mother in other days, amid other scenes,
-was brought forth, yellow and discoloured with the lapse of time.
-
-There was little money in the settlements. What little there was came in
-pay to the soldiers or the half-pay officers. Among the greater part of
-the population, business was carried on by barter. In Upper Canada the
-lack of specie was partly overcome by the use of a kind of paper money.
-‘This money consists of small squares of card or paper, on which are
-printed promissory notes for various sums. These notes are made payable
-once a year, generally about the latter end of September at Montreal.
-The name of the merchant or firm is subscribed.’ This was merely an
-extension of the system of credit still in use with country merchants,
-but it provided the settlers with a very convenient substitute for cash.
-The merchants did not suffer, as frequently this paper money was lost,
-and never presented; and cases were known of its use by Indians as
-wadding for their flint-locks.
-
-Social instincts among the settlers were strongly marked. Whenever a
-family was erecting a house or barn, the neighbours as a rule lent a
-helping hand. While the men were raising barn-timbers and roof-trees,
-the women gathered about the quilting-frames or the spinning-wheels.
-After the work was done, it was usual to have a festival. The young men
-wrestled and showed their prowess at trials of strength; the rest looked
-on and applauded. In the evening there was a dance, at which the local
-musician scraped out tuneless tunes on an ancient fiddle; and there was
-of course hearty eating and, it is to be feared, heavy drinking.
-
-Schools and churches were few and far between. A number of Loyalist
-clergy settled both in Nova Scotia and in Upper Canada, and these held
-services and taught school in the chief centres of population. The Rev.
-John Stuart was, for instance, appointed chaplain in 1784 at Cataraqui;
-and in 1786 he opened an academy there, for which he received government
-aid. In time other schools sprang up, taught by retired soldiers or
-farmers who were incapacitated for other work. The tuition given in these
-schools was of the most elementary sort. La Rochefoucauld, writing of
-Cataraqui in 1795, says: ‘In this district are some schools, but they
-are few in number. The children are instructed in reading and writing,
-and pay each a dollar a month. One of the masters, superior to the
-rest in point of knowledge, taught Latin; but he has left the school,
-without being succeeded by another instructor of the same learning.’ ‘At
-seven years of age,’ writes the son of a Loyalist family, ‘I was one of
-those who patronized Mrs Cranahan, who opened a Sylvan Seminary for the
-young idea in Adolphustown; from thence, I went to Jonathan Clark’s,
-and then tried Thomas Morden, lastly William Faulkiner, a relative of
-the Hagermans. You may suppose that these graduations to Parnassus was
-[_sic_] carried into effect, because a large amount of knowledge could
-be obtained. Not so; for Dilworth’s Spelling Book, and the New Testament,
-were the only books possessed by these academies.’
-
-The lack of a clergy was even more marked. When Bishop Mountain visited
-Upper Canada in 1794, he found only one Lutheran chapel and two
-Presbyterian churches between Montreal and Kingston. At Kingston he
-found ‘a small but decent church,’ and about the Bay of Quinté there
-were three or four log huts which were used by the Church of England
-missionary in the neighbourhood. At Niagara there was a clergyman, but
-no church; the services were held in the Freemasons’ Hall. This lack of
-a regularly-ordained clergy was partly remedied by a number of itinerant
-Methodist preachers or ‘exhorters.’ These men were described by Bishop
-Mountain as ‘a set of ignorant enthusiasts, whose preaching is calculated
-only to perplex the understanding, to corrupt the morals, to relax the
-nerves of industry, and dissolve the bands of society.’ But they gained
-a very strong hold on the Loyalist population; and for a long time they
-were familiar figures upon the country roads.
-
-For many years communications both in New Brunswick and in Upper Canada
-were mainly by water. The roads between the settlements were little more
-than forest paths. When Colonel Simcoe went to Upper Canada he planned
-to build a road running across the province from Montreal to the river
-Thames, to be called Dundas Street. He was recalled, however, before
-the road was completed; and the project was allowed to fall through. In
-1793 an act was passed by the legislature of Upper Canada ‘to regulate
-the laying out, amending, and keeping in repair, the public highways and
-roads.’ This threw on the individual settler the obligation of keeping
-the road across his lot in good repair; but the large amount of crown
-lands and clergy reserves and land held by speculators throughout the
-province made this act of little avail. It was not until 1798 that a
-road was run from the Bay of Quinté to the head of Lake Ontario, by an
-American surveyor named Asa Danforth. But even this government road was
-at times impassable; and there is evidence that some travellers preferred
-to follow the shore of the lake.
-
-It will be seen from these notes on social history that the Loyalists had
-no primrose path. But after the first grumblings and discontents, poured
-into the ears of Governor Haldimand and Governor Parr, they seem to have
-settled down contentedly to their lot; and their life appears to have
-been on the whole happy. Especially in the winter, when they had some
-leisure, they seem to have known how to enjoy themselves.
-
- In the winter season, nothing is more ardently wished for,
- by young persons of both sexes, in Upper Canada, than the
- setting in of frost, accompanied by a fall of snow. Then it
- is, that pleasure commences her reign. The sleighs are drawn
- out. Visits are paid, and returned, in all directions. Neither
- cold, distance, or badness of roads prove any impediment. The
- sleighs glide over all obstacles. It would excite surprise in
- a stranger to view the open before the Governor’s House on a
- levee morning, filled with these carriages. A sleigh would
- not probably make any great figure in Bond street, whose
- silken sons and daughters would probably mistake it for a
- turnip cart, but in the Canadas, it is the means of pleasure,
- and glowing healthful exercise. An overturn is nothing. It
- contributes subject matter for conversation at the next house
- that is visited, when a pleasant raillery often arises on the
- derangement of dress, which the ladies have sustained, and
- the more than usual display of graces, which the tumble has
- occasioned.
-
-This picture, drawn in 1793 by a nameless traveller, is an evidence of
-the courage and buoyancy of heart with which the United Empire Loyalists
-faced the toils and privations of life in their new home.
-
- Not drooping like poor fugitives they came
- In exodus to our Canadian wilds,
- But full of heart and hope, with heads erect
- And fearless eyes victorious in defeat.
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
-
-
-It is astonishing how little documentary evidence the Loyalists left
-behind them with regard to their migration. Among those who fled to
-England there were a few who kept diaries and journals, or wrote
-memoirs, which have found their way into print; and some contemporary
-records have been published with regard to the settlements of Nova
-Scotia and New Brunswick. But of the Loyalists who settled in Upper and
-Lower Canada there is hardly one who left behind him a written account
-of his experiences. The reason for this is that many of them were
-illiterate, and those who were literate were so occupied with carving
-a home for themselves out of the wilderness that they had neither
-time nor inclination for literary labours. Were it not for the state
-papers preserved in England, and for a collection of papers made by Sir
-Frederick Haldimand, the Swiss soldier of fortune who was governor of
-Quebec at the time of the migration, and who had a passion for filing
-documents away, our knowledge of the settlements in the Canadas would be
-of the most sketchy character.
-
-It would serve no good purpose to attempt here an exhaustive account of
-the printed sources relating to the United Empire Loyalists. All that
-can be done is to indicate some of the more important. The only general
-history of the Loyalists is Egerton Ryerson, _The Loyalists of America
-and Their Times_ (2 vols., 1880); it is diffuse and antiquated, and is
-written in a spirit of undiscriminating admiration of the Loyalists, but
-it contains much good material. Lorenzo Sabine, _Biographical Sketches of
-Loyalists of the American Revolution_ (2 vols., 1864), is an old book,
-but it is a storehouse of information about individual Loyalists, and
-it contains a suggestive introductory essay. Some admirable work on the
-Loyalists has been done by recent American historians. Claude H. Van
-Tyne, _The Loyalists in the American Revolution_ (1902), is a readable
-and scholarly study, based on extensive researches into documentary and
-newspaper sources. The Loyalist point of view will be found admirably set
-forth in M. C. Tyler, _The Literary History of the American Revolution_
-(2 vols., 1897), and _The Party of the Loyalists in the American
-Revolution_ (American Historical Review, I, 24). Of special studies in a
-limited field the most valuable and important is A. C. Flick, _Loyalism
-in New York_ (1901); it is the result of exhaustive researches, and
-contains an excellent bibliography of printed and manuscript sources.
-Other studies in a limited field are James H. Stark, _The Loyalists of
-Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution_ (1910), and
-G. A. Gilbert, _The Connecticut Loyalists_ (American Historical Review,
-IV, 273).
-
-For the settlements of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the most important
-source is _The Winslow Papers_ (edited by W. O. Raymond, 1901), an
-admirably annotated collection of private letters written by and to
-Colonel Edward Winslow. Some of the official correspondence relating to
-the migration is calendared in the Historical Manuscript Commission’s
-_Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great
-Britain_ (1909). Much material will be found in the provincial histories
-of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, such as Beamish Murdoch, _A History of
-Nova Scotia or Acadie_ (3 vols., 1867), and James Hannay, _History of New
-Brunswick_ (2 vols., 1909), and also in the local and county histories.
-The story of the Loyalists of Prince Edward Island is contained in W.
-H. Siebert and Florence E. Gilliam, _The Loyalists in Prince Edward
-Island_ (Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd
-series, IV, ii, 109). An account of the Shelburne colony will be found in
-T. Watson Smith, _The Loyalists at Shelburne_ (Collections of the Nova
-Scotia Historical Society, VI, 53).
-
-For the settlements in Upper and Lower Canada, the most important source
-is the Haldimand Papers, which are fully calendared in the Reports of
-the Canadian Archives from 1884 to 1889. J. McIlwraith, _Sir Frederick
-Haldimand_ (1904), contains a chapter on ‘The Loyalists’ which is based
-upon these papers. The most important secondary source is William
-Canniff, _History of the Settlement of Upper Canada_ (1869), a book
-the value of which is seriously diminished by lack of reference to
-authorities, and by a slipshod style, but which contains a vast amount
-of material preserved nowhere else. Among local histories reference may
-be made to C. M. Day, _Pioneers of the Eastern Townships_ (1863), James
-Croil, _Dundas_ (1861), and J. F. Pringle, _Lunenburgh or the Old Eastern
-District_ (1891). An interesting essay in local history is L. H. Tasker,
-_The United Empire Loyalist Settlement at Long Point, Lake Erie_ (Ontario
-Historical Society, Papers and Records, II). For the later immigration
-reference should be made to D. C. Scott, _John Graves Simcoe_ (1905), and
-Ernest Cruikshank, _Immigration from the United States Into Upper Canada,
-1784-1812_ (Proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Convention of the Ontario
-Educational Association, 263).
-
-An authoritative account of the proceedings of the commissioners
-appointed to inquire into the losses of the Loyalists is to be found in
-J. E. Wilmot, _Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry Into the
-Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists_ (1815).
-
-For the social history of the Loyalist settlements a useful book
-is A ‘Canuck’ (M. G. Scherk), _Pen Pictures of Early Pioneer Life
-in Upper Canada_ (1905). Many interesting notes on social history
-will be found also in accounts of travels such as the Duc de la
-Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels through the United States of North
-America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada_ (1799), _The
-Diary of Mrs John Graves Simcoe_ (edited by J. Ross Robertson, 1911), and
-_Canadian Letters: Description of a Tour thro’ the Provinces of Lower
-and Upper Canada in the Course of the Years 1792 and ’93_ (The Canadian
-Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, IX, 3 and 4).
-
-An excellent index to unprinted materials relating to the Loyalists is
-Wilfred Campbell, _Report on Manuscript Lists Relating to the United
-Empire Loyalists, with Reference to Other Sources_ (1909).
-
-See also in this Series: _The Father of British Canada; The War Chief of
-the Six Nations_.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Adams, John, a social comparison, 16;
- on strength of Loyalists, 17-18;
- favours compensating the Loyalists, 46.
-
- Allen, Lieut.-Col. Isaac, on New Brunswick, 72.
-
- American Revolution, Lecky on, 2;
- merely a phase of English party politics, 7;
- not a war of social classes, 16;
- one-third of the people opposed to measures of, 18;
- ‘fratricidal butchery’ in, 38;
- end of, 45.
-
- Americans, barbarity of, 40;
- have proof that Loyalists lifted scalps, 42-3;
- hypocrisy of, 48;
- migrate to Upper Canada, 123;
- testimonies against, 124-5;
- and in favour, 126.
-
- Aplin, Joseph, and the Loyalist settlement at Parrtown, 74.
-
-
- Bailey, Rev. Jacob, on the Loyalists, 56.
-
- Beecher, Rev. Jonathan, and the Shelburne settlement, 66.
-
- Bliss, Jonathan, a Loyalist in New Brunswick, 80;
- and social feeling in St John, 82-3.
-
- Blowers, Sampson Salter, and the Loyalists, 56.
-
- Boston, riots in, 21;
- and migration of the Loyalists, 54.
-
- Botsford, Amos, 56;
- on New Brunswick, 72.
-
- Boucher, Rev. Jonathan, advocates doctrines of passive obedience to
- authority and the divine right of kings, 8-10;
- but upholds right of petition, 10;
- and Washington, 13;
- threatened by revolutionary mob, 22-3.
-
- Brant, Joseph, loyalty of, 37;
- fails to control Indians at Cherry Valley, 40.
-
- Bunker’s Hill, British obstinacy at, 33.
-
- Burgoyne, General, and the Loyalists, 33, 38.
-
- Butler, Colonel John, and his Whig cousins, 16;
- incursions into United States, 34, 39;
- reprimanded, 42;
- and Indian barbarity, 43.
-
- Byles, Rev. Mather, and the Revolution, 30.
-
-
- Campbell, Thomas, his lines on Wyoming valley raid, 30.
-
- Cape Breton, Loyalists in, 63.
-
- Carleton, Sir Guy.
- See Dorchester, Lord.
-
- Carleton, Colonel Thomas, governor of New Brunswick, 79, 81.
-
- Cartwright, Richard, on the Americans in Upper Canada, 124, 126.
-
- Cataraqui, hard times of Loyalists at, 105-6.
-
- Chipman, Ward, a Loyalist in New Brunswick, 80;
- and social feeling in St John, 82-3.
-
- Constitutional Act of 1791, necessitated by the coming of the
- Loyalists, 6.
-
- Cooper, Dr Myles, endorses the principle of submission to authority,
- but upholds right of petition, 10.
-
- Cornwallis, General, and the Loyalists, 45.
-
- Cowper, William, his lines on American revolutionists, 20.
-
- Cummings, Samuel, 56;
- on New Brunswick, 72.
-
- Cuyler, Abraham, leads a Loyalist migration, 63.
-
-
- Declaration of Independence, rouses the Loyalists, 13-14.
-
- De Lancey, Colonel, on Loyalist settlement in New Brunswick, 75.
-
- Detroit, Loyalist settlement at, 109-10.
-
- Dole, James, a Loyalist agent, 65.
-
- Dorchester, Lord, on Canada, 4;
- denounces American Whigs, 50, 51;
- assists migration of the Loyalists, 56, 57;
- takes strong stand in New York, 59-60;
- initiates ‘Marke of Honor,’ 118;
- opposes creation of Upper Canada, 120-2.
-
- Dulany, Daniel, protests against British policy, 11-12.
-
- Dundas, Colonel Thomas, on the Loyalist settlement in New Brunswick,
- 84-5.
-
-
- Eastern Townships, Loyalists not allowed to settle in, 95-6.
-
-
- Fanning, Colonel Edmund, tries to take advantage of Loyalists in
- Prince Edward Island, 88.
-
- Finucane, Chief Justice, fails to appease Loyalists in New Brunswick,
- 77.
-
- Franklin, Benjamin, scouts idea of American independence, 13;
- and his son, 16;
- against granting amnesty to Loyalists, 46.
-
-
- Galloway, Joseph, disapproves of British policy, 11;
- a social comparison, 16.
-
- Georgia, strength of Loyalists in, 18.
-
- Germain, Lord George, incapacity of, 34.
-
- Gourlay, Robert, on the survey of townships in Upper Canada, 98.
-
- Grass, Captain Michael, 100;
- rouses Haldimand’s anger, 101.
-
- Great Britain, in the Peace of Versailles, 46-7;
- her betrayal of the Loyalists, 48-9;
- makes amends, 52;
- her generosity to Loyalists, 112-18.
-
- Gugy, Conrad, and Loyalist refugees, 92;
- accusation against, 93.
-
-
- Haldimand, Sir Frederick, denounces indiscriminate vengeance, 42;
- settles Loyalist refugees, 91-2, 97-9, 101, 102;
- debars settling in Eastern Townships, 96;
- on compensation to Loyalists, 116-17.
-
- Haliburton, T. C, on the Shelburne settlement, 69-70.
-
- Hauser, Frederick, 56;
- on New Brunswick, 72.
-
- Holland, Major Samuel, surveys townships in Upper Canada, 98.
-
- Howe, General, and migration of the Loyalists, 54-5.
-
- Hutchinson, Thomas, disapproves of British policy, 11;
- a comparison, 16;
- persecution of, 21.
-
-
- Indians in the American Revolution, barbarity of, 40;
- their use deprecated, 41-2.
-
-
- Jessup’s Corps, at Saratoga, 38;
- settlement of, 100.
-
- Johnson, Sir William, 16;
- his career, 35-6.
-
- Johnson, Sir John, escapes to Canada, 25;
- incursions into United States, 34, 40-1;
- raises ‘Royal Greens,’ 37;
- charges of barbarity, 41;
- supervises settlement of Loyalists, 99;
- and Loyalist claims, 113;
- superintendent of Indian Affairs, 116;
- compensation paid to, 118;
- his house, 128.
-
- Johnson, Lady, carried off a prisoner, 25.
-
- Johnson, Colonel Guy, raises Loyalist regiment, 37.
-
-
- King’s American Dragoons, hard lot of, in New Brunswick, 75-6, 77.
-
-
- Loughborough, Lord, on Britain’s desertion of the Loyalists, 48.
-
- Lower Canada, the Loyalists the indirect cause of an assembly being
- granted to, 6.
-
- Loyalists, the, vilified by early writers, 1-2;
- reparation made, 2;
- honoured in Canada, 3;
- effect of their exodus on United States, 4;
- effect of their migration on Canadian history, 4-6;
- subscribe to the principles of passive submission to authority and
- the right of petition, 8-10;
- disapprove of British policy, 11-12;
- causes of increase in numbers, 12-14;
- loyal toast, 14;
- numbers and strength, 16-19;
- persecution of, 20-31;
- and the test laws, 26-8;
- story of two Loyalists hanged in Philadelphia, 28;
- some penalties, 29;
- confiscation of property, 29-30;
- lack initiative, 32;
- success in battle, 33-4;
- charges of barbarism against, 34-5;
- charges refuted, 41-4;
- some regiments of, 36-8, 73;
- raids and incursions, 38-41;
- their hopeless position at end of war, 45-52;
- British betrayal of, 48-9;
- Britain makes amends, 52;
- migration to Nova Scotia, 53-61;
- some statistics of Loyalists in Maritime Provinces, 63, 66, 68, 73;
- the Shelburne settlement, 63-70;
- migration to New Brunswick, 71-85;
- Prince Edward Island, 86-90;
- Quebec, 91-6;
- Upper Canada, 97-111;
- allowances to, 102-4;
- compensation to, 112-16;
- honours and grants to, 116-18;
- their ‘Marke of Honor,’ 118-19;
- their houses and furniture, 127-9;
- clothing, 130-1;
- means of exchange, 131-2;
- social customs, 132;
- schools and churches, 132-4;
- their happy lot, 136-7.
-
- Loyalist regiments, settled in New Brunswick, 73;
- their distress, 75-6;
- when formed in Canada, 91;
- settlement of, in Upper Canada, 34, 37, 38, 99-100.
-
- Loyal Rangers, 38;
- at Wyoming valley, 39;
- at Mohawk valley, 41.
-
-
- Macdonell, Alexander, in ‘the ’45,’ 36;
- his ideas of border warfare, 39;
- barbarity of, 42.
-
- Machiche, Loyalist discontent at, 93-4.
-
- McKean, Thomas, on number of Loyalists, 18-19.
-
- Maclean, Colonel Allan, raises a Loyalist regiment, 37.
-
- Massachusetts, Loyalist migration from, 65-7.
-
- Mountain, Bishop, on religion in Upper Canada, 134.
-
- Montgomery, General Richard, in the American Revolution, 7.
-
- Mowat, Captain, and the Shelburne settlement, 67.
-
-
- New Brunswick, candid view of Loyalist in, 14;
- Governor Parr’s opinion of, 71;
- Loyalist settlements in, 72-7;
- erected into a province, 78-9;
- Loyalists fill chief offices in, 80;
- capital of, and election of representatives, 81-3;
- means of communication in, 134-5.
-
- Newton, William, amusing case of, 84.
-
- New York, strength of Loyalists in, 17;
- riots in, 22;
- a strange order, 23;
- and the test laws, 27;
- and confiscation of Loyalist property, 30;
- debts due to Loyalists cancelled, 46;
- laws enacted against Loyalists, 51;
- Sir Guy Carleton too much for congress of, 60.
-
- Niagara, Loyalist settlement at, 107-9.
-
- North, Lord, denounces Britain’s desertion of Loyalists, 48.
-
- Nova Scotia, migration of Loyalists to, 53-61;
- uncomplimentary opinions of, 61-2, 64;
- schools and churches in, 132-4.
-
-
- Odell, Rev. Jonathan, a Loyalist, 80.
-
- Oliver, Andrew, persecution of, 21.
-
- Ontario. See Upper Canada.
-
-
- Parr, John, governor of Nova Scotia, on the condition of Loyalist
- refugees, 58-9;
- and the Shelburne settlement, 65, 67-8;
- on New Brunswick, 71;
- and land grants in New Brunswick, 77, 79;
- on social status of Loyalists in Nova Scotia, 83.
-
- Pennsylvania, strength of Loyalists in, 17;
- and the test laws, 27.
-
- Prince Edward Island, Loyalists in, 63;
- scurvy treatment, 86-90.
-
- Pullency, Sir William, and land speculation, 125.
-
- Pynchon, Joseph, and the Shelburne settlement, 65-6.
-
-
- Quebec, Loyalist refugees flock to, 91;
- settlements, 92-5;
- all traces of lost, 95.
-
-
- ‘Rivington’s Gazette’ on terms of peace, 49.
-
- Rochefoucauld, Duc de la, and the Americans in Upper Canada, 123-4;
- on education at Cataraqui, 133.
-
- Rogers’s Rangers, settlement of, 100.
-
- ‘Royal Greens,’ or the King’s Royal Regiment, raised, 37;
- at ambuscade of Oriskany, 38;
- settlement of, 100.
-
- Royal Highland Emigrants, 37.
-
-
- St John, social bitterness among Loyalists in, 82.
-
- Scottish Highlanders, rebels of ‘the ’45,’ become Loyalists, 36.
-
- Seabury, Dr, and the Loyalists, 56.
-
- Shelburne, story of the Loyalist settlement at, 63-70.
-
- Simcoe, Col. John Graves, and the U.E. regulation, 119;
- his good work in Upper Canada, 122;
- invites Americans to cross the border, 123;
- and road-building, 135.
-
- Smart, Rev. William, on the Loyalists in Upper Canada, 111, 116.
-
- Sons of Liberty and the Loyalists, 23.
-
- Stamp Act, the, some effects of, 21.
-
- Stuart, Rev. John, at Cataraqui, 133.
-
-
- Tarleton’s Loyal Cavalry, success in the Carolinas, 33-4.
-
- Tea duty, Loyalist objection to, 11.
-
- Test laws, tyranny of, 26;
- not strictly enforced, 27.
-
- Tories, American, get support of English Tories, 7;
- loyalty of, 8;
- an Episcopalian party, 15;
- a social comparison with Whigs, 16;
- tarring and feathering of, 22, 23;
- test laws, 27-30.
-
- Tryon, Governor, and Loyalist success, 34.
-
-
- United Empire Loyalists, origin of name, 118-19.
- See Loyalists.
-
- Upper Canada, migration of Loyalists into determines form of
- government, 5-6;
- Loyalists removed to, 95;
- settlements in, 97-100;
- ‘Family Compact’ party, 111;
- names of districts in, 120-1;
- Americans flock into, 123-5;
- schools and churches in, 132-4;
- means of communication, 134-5.
-
-
- Van Alstine, Major, and settlement of Loyalists, 100, 111;
- his grant, 117.
-
- Van Schaak, Peter, a Whig, disapproves of test laws, 26-7.
-
- Versailles, Peace of, and the Loyalists, 46-52.
-
- Virginia and the Loyalists, 17, 47.
-
-
- Washington, George, his aversion to the idea of independence, 13;
- a comparison, 16;
- approves the persecution of Loyalists, 23-4;
- on the Loyalist raids, 44;
- refuses to treat with Loyalists, 45;
- his advice to the Loyalists, 50.
-
- Whigs, American, get support of English Whigs, 7;
- their change of front, 13;
- a Presbyterian party, 15;
- a social comparison with Tories, 16;
- a powerful organization formed to stamp out Loyalism, 24-5;
- and the test laws, 27.
-
- Winslow, Edward, on conditions of Loyalist refugees, 61;
- on New Brunswick, 71-2, 75-6, 78, 80;
- and the wealthy widow, 84;
- on his house, 127-8.
-
-
-
-
-
-THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA
-
-Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton of the University of Toronto
-
-
-A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for popular reading,
-designed to set forth, in historic continuity, the principal events and
-movements in Canada, from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.
-
-PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS
-
- 1. _The Dawn of Canadian History_
- A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
- BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
-
- 2. _The Mariner of St Malo_
- A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
- BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
-
-PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE
-
- 3. _The Founder of New France_
- A Chronicle of Champlain
- BY CHARLES W. COLBY
-
- 4. _The Jesuit Missions_
- A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
- BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
-
- 5. _The Seigneurs of Old Canada_
- A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
- BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
-
- 6. _The Great Intendant_
- A Chronicle of Jean Talon
- BY THOMAS CHAPAIS
-
- 7. _The Fighting Governor_
- A Chronicle of Frontenac
- BY CHARLES W. COLBY
-
-PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION
-
- 8. _The Great Fortress_
- A Chronicle of Louisbourg
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
- 9. _The Acadian Exiles_
- A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
- BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY
-
- 10. _The Passing of New France_
- A Chronicle of Montcalm
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
- 11. _The Winning of Canada_
- A Chronicle of Wolfe
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
-PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA
-
- 12. _The Father of British Canada_
- A Chronicle of Carleton
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
- 13. _The United Empire Loyalists_
- A Chronicle of the Great Migration
- BY W. STEWART WALLACE
-
- 14. _The War with the United States_
- A Chronicle of 1812
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
- PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA
-
- 15. _The War Chief of the Ottawas_
- A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
- BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
-
- 16. _The War Chief of the Six Nations_
- A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
- BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
-
- 17. _Tecumseh_
- A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
- BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND
-
-PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST
-
- 18. _The ‘Adventurers of England’ on Hudson Bay_
- A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
- BY AGNES C. LAUT
-
- 19. _Pathfinders of the Great Plains_
- A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
- BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE
-
- 20. _Adventurers of the Far North_
- A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
- BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
-
- 21. _The Red River Colony_
- A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
- BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
-
- 22. _Pioneers of the Pacific Coast_
- A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
- BY AGNES C. LAUT
-
- 23. _The Cariboo Trail_
- A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
- BY AGNES C. LAUT
-
-PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM
-
- 24. _The Family Compact_
- A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
- BY W. STEWART WALLACE
-
- 25. _The Patriotes of ’37_
- A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
- BY ALFRED D. DECELLES
-
- 26. _The Tribune of Nova Scotia_
- A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
- BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT
-
- 27. _The Winning of Popular Government_
- A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
- BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
-
-PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY
-
- 28. _The Fathers of Confederation_
- A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
- BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN
-
- 29. _The Day of Sir John Macdonald_
- A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
- BY SIR JOSEPH POPE
-
- 30. _The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier_
- A Chronicle of Our Own Times
- BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
-
-PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS
-
- 31. _All Afloat_
- A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
- BY WILLIAM WOOD
-
- 32. _The Railway Builders_
- A Chronicle of Overland Highways
- BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
-
- Published by
- Glasgow, Brook & Company
- TORONTO, CANADA
-
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