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 street's 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 pounds 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 5,000 pounds 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.
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.
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 2,500 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 3,000 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. Ship-yards 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 1,500 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.
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.
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 protege 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, [Footnote: _Dundas, or a Sketch of Canadian History_, by James
Croil, Montreal, 1861.] 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.'
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 Gaspe 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 Gaspe 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
Gaspe, on the north shore of the St Lawrence above Montreal, on the Bay of
Quinte, 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 Quinte. 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
Kotte 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 Quinte. The
next spring his men returned, and surveyed eight townships along the north
bank of the St Lawrence, between the Bay of Quinte 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.
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 Quinte 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 fire-lock ... intended for the messes, the pigeon and wildfowl season';
but later on a fire-lock 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
1,568 men, 626 women, 1,492 children, and 90 servants, making a total of 3,776
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 Quinte.
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 Quinte, 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 pounds over and above
occasional payments of a particular or extraordinary nature amounting to
17,000 pounds or 18,000 pounds 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 5,000 acres, each
captain 3,000, each subaltern 2,000, 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 1,200 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
pounds.
The grants varied in size from 10 pounds, the compensation paid to
a common soldier, to 44,500 pounds, 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
pounds, 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 Quinte; 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.
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 _emigre_ 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 Quinte 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 Quinte 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_.
END
Also see the synonymous site:
Buried History of the American Revolution
