_CHRONICLES OF CANADA_
    Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
    In thirty-two volumes

    13

    THE UNITED EMPIRE
    LOYALISTS

    BY W. STEWART WALLACE

    _Part IV_
    _The Beginnings of British Canada_




[Illustration: GEORGE III

From the National Portrait Gallery]




                                   THE
                              UNITED EMPIRE
                                LOYALISTS

                   A Chronicle of the Great Migration

                                   BY
                           W. STEWART WALLACE

                             [Illustration]

                                 TORONTO
                        GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
                                  1920

               _Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
                          the Berne Convention_

             PRESS OF THE HUNTER-ROSE CO., LIMITED, TORONTO




CONTENTS


                                              Page

        I. INTRODUCTORY                          1

       II. LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES     7

      III. PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS         20

      IV. THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS              32

       V. PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR                  45

      VI. THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA             53

     VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK            71

    VIII. IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND               86

      IX. THE LOYALISTS IN QUEBEC               91

       X. THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS               97

      XI. COMPENSATION AND HONOUR              112

     XII. THE AMERICAN MIGRATION               120

    XIII. THE LOYALIST IN HIS NEW HOME         127

          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE                 138

          INDEX                                143




ILLUSTRATIONS


    GEORGE III                                               _Frontispiece_
      From the National Portrait Gallery.

    LORD CORNWALLIS                                       _Facing page_ 46
      From the National Portrait Gallery.

    UPPER AND LOWER CANADA AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES AT
        THE TIME OF THE LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS                    ”       52
      Map by Bartholomew.

    THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON—BUILT 1787          ”       80

    FACSIMILE OF CARD USED IN THE FIRST NEW BRUNSWICK
        ELECTION, 1785                                          ”       82

    SIR FREDERICK HALDIMAND                                     ”       98
      After a contemporary painting.

    JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE                                          ”      122
      From the bust in Exeter Cathedral.




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


The United Empire Loyalists have suffered a strange fate at the hands of
historians. It is not too much to say that for nearly a century their
history was written by their enemies. English writers, for obvious
reasons, took little pleasure in dwelling on the American Revolution, and
most of the early accounts were therefore American in their origin. Any
one who takes the trouble to read these early accounts will be struck by
the amazing manner in which the Loyalists are treated. They are either
ignored entirely or else they are painted in the blackest colours.

    So vile a crew the world ne’er saw before,
    And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more!
    If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air,
    Those ghosts have entered these base bodies here.
    Murder and blood is still their dear delight.

So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he
voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians of the
first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively
insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American
colonies were all but unanimous in their armed opposition to the British
government.

Within recent years, however, there has been a change. American
historians of a new school have revised the history of the Revolution,
and a tardy reparation has been made to the memory of the Tories of
that day. Tyler, Van Tyne, Flick, and other writers have all made the
_amende honorable_ on behalf of their countrymen. Indeed, some of these
writers, in their anxiety to stand straight, have leaned backwards; and
by no one perhaps will the ultra-Tory view of the Revolution be found
so clearly expressed as by them. At the same time the history of the
Revolution has been rewritten by some English historians; and we have a
writer like Lecky declaring that the American Revolution ‘was the work
of an energetic minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and
fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little love, and
leading them step by step to a position from which it was impossible to
recede.’

Thus, in the United States and in England, the pendulum has swung from
one extreme to the other. In Canada it has remained stationary. There,
in the country where they settled, the United Empire Loyalists are still
regarded with an uncritical veneration which has in it something of the
spirit of primitive ancestor-worship. The interest which Canadians have
taken in the Loyalists has been either patriotic or genealogical; and
few attempts have been made to tell their story in the cold light of
impartial history, or to estimate the results which have flowed from
their migration. Yet such an attempt is worth while making—an attempt to
do the United Empire Loyalists the honour of painting them as they were,
and of describing the profound and far-reaching influences which they
exerted on the history of both Canada and the United States.

In the history of the United States the exodus of the Loyalists is an
event comparable only to the expulsion of the Huguenots from France
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Loyalists, whatever
their social status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented
the conservative and moderate element in the revolting states; and
their removal, whether by banishment or disfranchisement, meant the
elimination of a very wholesome element in the body politic. To this
were due in part no doubt many of the early errors of the republic in
finance, diplomacy, and politics. At the same time it was a circumstance
which must have hastened by many years the triumph of democracy. In the
tenure of land, for example, the emigration produced a revolution. The
confiscated estates of the great Tory landowners were in most cases cut
up into small lots and sold to the common people; and thus the process
of levelling and making more democratic the whole social structure was
accelerated.

On the Canadian body politic the impress of the Loyalist migration is so
deep that it would be difficult to overestimate it. It is no exaggeration
to say that the United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current
of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers saw no future
before Canada but that of a French colony under the British crown.
‘Barring a catastrophe shocking to think of,’ wrote Sir Guy Carleton in
1767, ‘this country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the Canadian
race, who have already taken such firm root, and got to so great a
height, that any new stock transplanted will be totally hid, except in
the towns of Quebec and Montreal.’ Just how discerning this prophecy was
may be judged from the fact that even to-day it holds true with regard to
the districts that were settled at the time it was written. What rendered
it void was the unexpected influx of the refugees of the Revolution.
The effect of this immigration was to create two new English-speaking
provinces, New Brunswick and Upper Canada, and to strengthen the English
element in two other provinces, Lower Canada and Nova Scotia, so that
ultimately the French population in Canada was outnumbered by the
English population surrounding it. Nor should the character of this
English immigration escape notice. It was not only English; but it was
also filled with a passionate loyalty to the British crown. This fact
serves to explain a great deal in later Canadian history. Before 1783
the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was by no means assured:
after 1783 the Imperial tie was well-knit.

Nor can there be any doubt that the coming of the Loyalists hastened
the advent of free institutions. It was the settlement of Upper Canada
that rendered the Quebec Act of 1774 obsolete, and made necessary the
Constitutional Act of 1791, which granted to the Canadas representative
assemblies. The Loyalists were Tories and Imperialists; but, in the
colonies from which they came, they had been accustomed to a very
advanced type of democratic government, and it was not to be expected
that they would quietly reconcile themselves in their new home to the
arbitrary system of the Quebec Act. The French Canadians, on the other
hand, had not been accustomed to representative institutions, and did
not desire them. But when Upper Canada was granted an assembly, it was
impossible not to grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and so Canada
was started on that road of constitutional development which has brought
her to her present position as a self-governing unit in the British
Empire.




CHAPTER II

LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES


It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution was merely a
phase of English party politics in the eighteenth century. In this view
there is undoubtedly an element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle
within the British Empire, in which were aligned on one side the American
Whigs supported by the English Whigs, and on the other side the English
Tories supported by the American Tories. The leaders of the Whig party
in England, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Colonel Barré, the great
Chatham himself, all championed the cause of the American revolutionists
in the English parliament. There were many cases of Whig officers in the
English army who refused to serve against the rebels in America. General
Richard Montgomery, who led the revolutionists in their attack on Quebec
in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English officer who, having resigned
his commission, came to America and, on the outbreak of the rebellion,
took service in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were thousands
of American Tories who took service under the king’s banner; and some of
the severest defeats which the rebel forces suffered were encountered at
their hands.

It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely the parties in
England with the parties in America. The old Tory party in England was
very different from the so-called Tory party in America. The term Tory
in America was, as a matter of fact, an epithet of derision applied
by the revolutionists to all who opposed them. The opponents of the
revolutionists called themselves not Tories, but Loyalists or ‘friends of
government.’

There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a few who held language
that smacked of Toryism. Among the Loyalist pamphleteers there were those
who preached the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. Thus
the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a clergyman of Virginia, wrote:

    Having then, my brethren, thus long been tossed to and fro in
    a wearisome circle of uncertain traditions, or in speculations
    and projects still more uncertain, concerning government, what
    better can you do than, following the apostle’s advice, ‘to
    submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s
    sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors,
    as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of
    evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well? For, so is
    the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the
    ignorance of foolish men; as free, and not using your liberty
    for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God. Honour
    all men: love the brotherhood: fear God: honour the king.’

Jonathan Boucher subscribed to the doctrine of the divine right of kings:

    Copying after the fair model of heaven itself, wherein there
    was government even among the angels, the families of the earth
    were subjected to rulers, at first set over them by God. ‘For
    there is no power, but of God: the powers that be are ordained
    of God.’ The first father was the first king.... Hence it is,
    that our church, in perfect conformity with the doctrine here
    inculcated, in her explication of the fifth commandment, from
    the obedience due to parents, wisely derives the congenial duty
    of ‘honouring the king, and all that are put in authority under
    him.’

Dr Myles Cooper, the president of King’s College, took up similar ground.
God, he said, established the laws of government, ordained the British
power, and commanded all to obey authority. ‘The laws of heaven and
earth’ forbade rebellion. To threaten open disrespect of government was
‘an unpardonable crime.’ ‘The principles of submission and obedience to
lawful authority’ were religious duties.

But even Jonathan Boucher and Myles Cooper did not apply these doctrines
without reserve. They both upheld the sacred right of petition and
remonstrance. ‘It is your duty,’ wrote Boucher, ‘to instruct your members
to take all the constitutional means in their power to obtain redress.’
Both he and Cooper deplored the policy of the British ministry. Cooper
declared the Stamp Act to be contrary to American rights; he approved
of the opposition to the duties on the enumerated articles; and he was
inclined to think the duty on tea ‘dangerous to constitutional liberty.’

It may be confidently asserted that the great majority of the American
Loyalists, in fact, did not approve of the course pursued by the British
government between 1765 and 1774. They did not deny its legality;
but they doubted as a rule either its wisdom or its justice. Thomas
Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, one of the most famous and
most hated of the Loyalists, went to England, if we are to believe his
private letters, with the secret ambition of obtaining the repeal of the
act which closed Boston harbour. Joseph Galloway, another of the Loyalist
leaders, and the author of the last serious attempt at conciliation,
actually sat in the first Continental Congress, which was called with
the object of obtaining the redress of what Galloway himself described
as ‘the grievances justly complained of.’ Still more instructive is the
case of Daniel Dulany of Maryland. Dulany, one of the most distinguished
lawyers of his time, was after the Declaration of Independence denounced
as a Tory; his property was confiscated, and the safety of his person
imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the Revolution he had been found in
the ranks of the Whig pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was
ever made on the policy of the British government than that contained in
his _Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British
Colonies_. When the elder Pitt attacked the Stamp Act in the House of
Commons in January 1766, he borrowed most of his argument from this
pamphlet, which had appeared three months before.

This difficulty which many of the Loyalists felt with regard to the
justice of the position taken up by the British government greatly
weakened the hands of the Loyalist party in the early stages of the
Revolution. It was only as the Revolution gained momentum that the party
grew in vigour and numbers. A variety of factors contributed to this
result. In the first place there were the excesses of the revolutionary
mob. When the mob took to sacking private houses, driving clergymen
out of their pulpits, and tarring and feathering respectable citizens,
there were doubtless many law-abiding people who became Tories in spite
of themselves. Later on, the methods of the inquisitorial communities
possibly made Tories out of some who were the victims of their
attentions. The outbreak of armed rebellion must have shocked many into
a reactionary attitude. It was of these that a Whig satirist wrote,
quoting:

    This word, Rebellion, hath frozen them up,
    Like fish in a pond.

But the event which brought the greatest reinforcement to the Loyalist
ranks was the Declaration of Independence. Six months before the
Declaration of Independence was passed by the Continental Congress, the
Whig leaders had been almost unanimous in repudiating any intention of
severing the connection between the mother country and the colonies.
Benjamin Franklin told Lord Chatham that he had never heard in America
one word in favour of independence ‘from any person, drunk or sober.’
Jonathan Boucher says that Washington told him in the summer of 1775
‘that if ever I heard of his joining in any such measures, I had his
leave to set him down for everything wicked.’ As late as Christmas Day
1775 the revolutionary congress of New Hampshire officially proclaimed
their disavowal of any purpose ‘aiming at independence.’ Instances such
as these could be reproduced indefinitely. When, therefore, the Whig
leaders in the summer of 1776 made their right-about-face with regard
to independence, it is not surprising that some of their followers fell
away from them. Among these were many who were heartily opposed to the
measures of the British government, and who had even approved of the
policy of armed rebellion, but who could not forget that they were born
British subjects. They drank to the toast, ‘My country, may she always be
right; but right or wrong, my country.’

Other motives influenced the growth of the Loyalist party. There
were those who opposed the Revolution because they were dependent on
government for their livelihood, royal office-holders and Anglican
clergymen for instance. There were those who were Loyalists because they
thought they had picked the winning side, such as the man who candidly
wrote from New Brunswick in 1788, ‘I have made one great mistake in
politics, for which reason I never intend to make so great a blunder
again.’ Many espoused the cause because they were natives of the British
Isles, and had not become thoroughly saturated with American ideas: of
the claimants for compensation before the Royal Commissioners after
the war almost two-thirds were persons who had been born in England,
Scotland, or Ireland. In some of the colonies the struggle between Whig
and Tory followed older party lines: this was especially true in New
York, where the Livingston or Presbyterian party became Whig and the
De Lancey or Episcopalian party Tory. Curiously enough the cleavage
in many places followed religious lines. The members of the Church
of England were in the main Loyalists; the Presbyterians were in the
main revolutionists. The revolutionist cause was often strongest in
those colonies, such as Connecticut, where the Church of England was
weakest. But the division was far from being a strict one. There were
even members of the Church of England in the Boston Tea Party; and there
were Presbyterians among the exiles who went to Canada and Nova Scotia.
The Revolution was not in any sense a religious war; but religious
differences contributed to embitter the conflict, and doubtless made
Whigs or Tories of people who had no other interest at stake.

It is commonly supposed that the Loyalists drew their strength from the
upper classes in the colonies, while the revolutionists drew theirs
from the proletariat. There is just enough truth in this to make it
misleading. It is true that among the official classes and the large
landowners, among the clergymen, lawyers, and physicians, the majority
were Loyalists; and it is true that the mob was everywhere revolutionist.
But it cannot be said that the Revolution was in any sense a war of
social classes. In it father was arrayed against son and brother against
brother. Benjamin Franklin was a Whig; his son, Sir William Franklin, was
a Tory. In the valley of the Susquehanna the Tory Colonel John Butler,
of Butler’s Rangers, found himself confronted by his Whig cousins,
Colonel William Butler and Colonel Zeb Butler. George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, were not inferior in social status to Sir William
Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson, and Joseph Galloway. And, on the other hand,
there were no humbler peasants in the revolutionary ranks than some of
the Loyalist farmers who migrated to Upper Canada in 1783. All that can
be said is that the Loyalists were most numerous among those classes
which had most to lose by the change, and least numerous among those
classes which had least to lose.

Much labour has been spent on the problem of the numbers of the
Loyalists. No means of numbering political opinions was resorted to at
the time of the Revolution, so that satisfactory statistics are not
available. There was, moreover, throughout the contest a good deal of
going and coming between the Whig and Tory camps, which makes an estimate
still more difficult. ‘I have been struck,’ wrote Lorenzo Sabine, ‘in
the course of my investigations, with the absence of fixed principles,
not only among people in the common walks of life, but in many of the
prominent personages of the day.’ Alexander Hamilton, for instance,
deserted from the Tories to the Whigs; Benedict Arnold deserted from the
Whigs to the Tories.

The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they constituted an
actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies. In 1779 they professed to
have more troops in the field than the Continental Congress. These
statements were no doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength
of the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony of
New York they may well have been in the majority. They were strong
also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an officer of the revolutionary
army described that colony as ‘the enemies’ country.’ ‘New York and
Pennsylvania,’ wrote John Adams years afterwards, ‘were so nearly
divided—if their propensity was not against us—that if New England on one
side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have
joined the British.’ In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority
that in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself from the
revolutionary movement had it not been for the surrender of Cornwallis at
Yorktown. On the other hand, in the New England colonies the Loyalists
were a small minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even
there predominant only in one or two towns.

There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution in
the neighbourhood of three million people. Of these it is probable that
at least one million were Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the
opinion of John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment, and
whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him to exaggerate.
He gave it as his opinion more than once that about one-third of the
people of the Thirteen Colonies had been opposed to the measures of the
Revolution in all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a letter
to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had signed the
Declaration of Independence, and had been a member of every Continental
Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean
replied, ‘You say that ... about a third of the people of the colonies
were against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could
fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude
you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were
against it.’




CHAPTER III

PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS


In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing in the seclusion
of his garden at Olney, paid his respects to the American revolutionists
in the following lines:

    Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
      On t’ other side the Atlantic,
    I always held them in the right,
      But most so when most frantic.

    When lawless mobs insult the court,
      That man shall be my toast,
    If breaking windows be the sport,
      Who bravely breaks the most.

    But oh! for him my fancy culls
      The choicest flowers she bears,
    Who constitutionally pulls
      Your house about your ears.

When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of information with
regard to affairs in America were probably slight; but had he been
writing at the seat of war he could not have touched off the treatment of
the Loyalists by the revolutionists with more effective irony.

There were two kinds of persecution to which the Loyalists were
subjected—that which was perpetrated by ‘lawless mobs,’ and that which
was carried out ‘constitutionally.’

It was at the hands of the mob that the Loyalists first suffered
persecution. Probably the worst of the revolutionary mobs was that which
paraded the streets of Boston. In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act
agitation, large crowds in Boston attacked and destroyed the magnificent
houses of Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson. They broke down the doors
with broadaxes, destroyed the furniture, stole the money and jewels,
scattered the books and papers, and, having drunk the wines in the
cellar, proceeded to the dismantling of the roof and walls. The owners of
the houses barely escaped with their lives. In 1768 the same mob wantonly
attacked the British troops in Boston, and so precipitated what American
historians used to term ‘the Boston Massacre’; and in 1773 the famous
band of ‘Boston Indians’ threw the tea into Boston harbour.

In other places the excesses of the mob were nearly as great. In New York
they were active in destroying printing-presses from which had issued
Tory pamphlets, in breaking windows of private houses, in stealing live
stock and personal effects, and in destroying property. A favourite
pastime was tarring and feathering ‘obnoxious Tories.’ This consisted in
stripping the victim naked, smearing him with a coat of tar and feathers,
and parading him about the streets in a cart for the contemplation of
his neighbours. Another amusement was making Tories ride the rail. This
consisted in putting the ‘unhappy victims upon sharp rails with one leg
on each side; each rail was carried upon the shoulders of two tall men,
with a man on each side to keep the poor wretch straight and fixed in his
seat.’

Even clergymen were not free from the attentions of the mob. The Rev.
Jonathan Boucher tells us that he was compelled to preach with loaded
pistols placed on the pulpit cushions beside him. On one occasion he
was prevented from entering the pulpit by two hundred armed men, whose
leader warned him not to attempt to preach. ‘I returned for answer,’ says
Boucher, ‘that there was but one way by which they could keep me out
of it, and that was by taking away my life. At the proper time, with
my sermon in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other, like Nehemiah I
prepared to ascend my pulpit, when one of my friends, Mr David Crauford,
having got behind me, threw his arms round me and held me fast. He
assured me that he had heard the most positive orders given to twenty
men picked out for the purpose, to fire on me the moment I got into the
pulpit.’

That the practices of the mob were not frowned upon by the revolutionary
leaders, there is good reason for believing. The provincial Congress
of New York, in December 1776, went so far as to order the committee
of public safety to secure all the pitch and tar ‘necessary for the
public use and public safety.’ Even Washington seems to have approved of
persecution of the Tories by the mob. In 1776 General Putnam, meeting a
procession of the Sons of Liberty who were parading a number of Tories
on rails up and down the streets of New York, attempted to put a stop to
the barbarous proceeding. Washington, on hearing of this, administered
a reprimand to Putnam, declaring ‘that to discourage such proceedings
was to injure the cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that
nobody would attempt it but an enemy to his country.’

Very early in the Revolution the Whigs began to organize. They first
formed themselves into local associations, similar to the Puritan
associations in the Great Rebellion in England, and announced that they
would ‘hold all those persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies
who shall refuse to subscribe this association.’ In connection with these
associations there sprang up local committees.

    From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street,
    The new-born statesmen in committee meet,

sang a Loyalist verse-writer. Very soon there was completed an
organization, stretching from the Continental Congress and the provincial
congresses at one end down to the pettiest parish committees on the
other, which was destined to prove a most effective engine for stamping
out loyalism, and which was to contribute in no small degree to the
success of the Revolution.

Though the action of the mob never entirely disappeared, the persecution
of the Tories was taken over, as soon as the Revolution got under way,
by this semi-official organization. What usually happened was that the
Continental or provincial Congress laid down the general policy to be
followed, and the local committees carried it out in detail. Thus, when
early in 1776 the Continental Congress recommended the disarming of the
Tories, it was the local committees which carried the recommendation
into effect. During this early period the conduct of the revolutionary
authorities was remarkably moderate. They arrested the Tories, tried
them, held them at bail for their good behaviour, quarantined them in
their houses, exiled them to other districts, but only in extreme cases
did they imprison them. There was, of course, a good deal of hardship
entailed on the Tories; and occasionally the agents of the revolutionary
committees acted without authority, as when Colonel Dayton, who was sent
to arrest Sir John Johnson at his home in the Mohawk valley, sacked
Johnson Hall and carried off Lady Johnson a prisoner, on finding that Sir
John Johnson had escaped to Canada with many of his Highland retainers.
But, as a rule, in this early period, the measures taken both by the
revolutionary committees and by the army officers were easily defensible
on the ground of military necessity.

But with the Declaration of Independence a new order of things was
inaugurated. That measure revolutionized the political situation. With
the severance of the Imperial tie, loyalism became tantamount to treason
to the state; and Loyalists laid themselves open to all the penalties of
treason. The Declaration of Independence was followed by the test laws.
These laws compelled every one to abjure allegiance to the British crown,
and swear allegiance to the state in which he resided. A record was kept
of those who took the oath, and to them were given certificates without
which no traveller was safe from arrest. Those who failed to take the
oath became liable to imprisonment, confiscation of property, banishment,
and even death.

Even among the Whigs there was a good deal of opposition to the test
laws. Peter Van Schaak, a moderate Whig of New York state, so strongly
disapproved of the test laws that he seceded from the revolutionary
party. ‘Had you,’ he wrote, ‘at the beginning of the war, permitted every
one differing in sentiment from you, to take the other side, or at least
to have removed out of the State, with their property ... it would have
been a conduct magnanimous and just. But, now, after restraining those
persons from removing; punishing them, if, in the attempt, they were
apprehended; selling their estates if they escaped; compelling them to
the duties of subjects under heavy penalties; deriving aid from them in
the prosecution of the war ... now to compel them to take an oath is an
act of severity.’

Of course, the test laws were not rigidly or universally enforced. In
Pennsylvania only a small proportion of the population took the oath. In
New York, out of one thousand Tories arrested for failure to take the
oath, six hundred were allowed to go on bail, and the rest were merely
acquitted or imprisoned. On the whole the American revolutionists were
not bloody-minded men; they inaugurated no September Massacres, no Reign
of Terror, no _dragonnades_. There was a distinct aversion among them to
applying the death penalty. ‘We shall have many unhappy persons to take
their trials for their life next Oyer court,’ wrote a North Carolina
patriot. ‘Law should be strictly adhered to, severity exercised, but the
doors of mercy should never be shut.’

The test laws, nevertheless, and the other discriminating laws passed
against the Loyalists provided the excuse for a great deal of barbarism
and ruthlessness. In Pennsylvania bills of attainder were passed against
no fewer than four hundred and ninety persons. The property of nearly all
these persons was confiscated, and several of them were put to death. A
detailed account has come down to us of the hanging of two Loyalists of
Philadelphia named Roberts and Carlisle. These two men had shown great
zeal for the king’s cause when the British Army was in Philadelphia.
After Philadelphia was evacuated, they were seized by the Whigs, tried,
and condemned to be hanged. Roberts’s wife and children went before
Congress and on their knees begged for mercy; but in vain. One November
morning of 1778 the two men were marched to the gallows, with halters
round their necks. At the gallows, wrote a spectator, Roberts’s behaviour
‘did honour to human nature.’

    He nothing common did or mean
    Upon that memorable scene

Addressing the spectators, he told them that his conscience acquitted him
of guilt; that he suffered for doing his duty to his sovereign; and that
his blood would one day be required at their hands. Then he turned to his
children and charged them to remember the principles for which he died,
and to adhere to them while they had breath.

But if these judicial murders were few and far between, in other respects
the revolutionists showed the Tories little mercy. Both those who
remained in the country and those who fled from it were subjected to an
attack on their personal fortunes which gradually impoverished them.
This was carried on at first by a nibbling system of fines and special
taxation. Loyalists were fined for evading military service, for the hire
of substitutes, for any manifestation of loyalty. They were subjected
to double and treble taxes; and in New York and South Carolina they
had to make good all robberies committed in their counties. Then the
revolutionary leaders turned to the expedient of confiscation. From the
very first some of the patriots, without doubt, had an eye on Loyalist
property; and when the coffers of the Continental Congress had been
emptied, the idea gained ground that the Revolution might be financed
by the confiscation of Loyalist estates. Late in 1777 the plan was
embodied in a resolution of the Continental Congress, and the states were
recommended to invest the proceeds in continental loan certificates. The
idea proved very popular; and in spite of a great deal of corruption
in connection with the sale and transfer of the land, large sums found
their way as a result into the state exchequers. In New York alone over
£3,600,000 worth of property was acquired by the state.

The Tory who refused to take the oath of allegiance became in fact
an outlaw. He did not have in the courts of law even the rights of a
foreigner. If his neighbours owed him money, he had no legal redress.
He might be assaulted, insulted, blackmailed, or slandered, yet the law
granted him no remedy. No relative or friend could leave an orphan child
to his guardianship. He could be the executor or administrator of no
man’s estate. He could neither buy land nor transfer it to another. If he
was a lawyer, he was denied the right to practise his profession.

This strict legal view of the status of the Loyalist may not have been
always and everywhere enforced. There were Loyalists, such as the Rev.
Mather Byles of Boston, who refused to be molested, and who survived the
Revolution unharmed. But when all allowance is made for these exceptions,
it is not difficult to understand how the great majority of avowed Tories
came to take refuge within the British lines, to enlist under the
British flag, and, when the Revolution had proved successful, to leave
their homes for ever and begin life anew amid other surroundings. The
persecution to which they were subjected left them no alternative.




CHAPTER IV

THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS


It has been charged against the Loyalists, and the charge cannot be
denied, that at the beginning of the Revolution they lacked initiative,
and were slow to organize and defend themselves. It was not, in fact,
until 1776 that Loyalist regiments began to be formed on an extensive
scale. There were several reasons why this was so. In the first place a
great many of the Loyalists, as has been pointed out, were not at the
outset in complete sympathy with the policy of the British government;
and those who might have been willing to take up arms were very early
disarmed and intimidated by the energy of the revolutionary authorities.
In the second place that very conservatism which made the Loyalists draw
back from revolution hindered them from taking arms until the king gave
them commissions and provided facilities for military organization. And
there is no fact better attested in the history of the Revolution than
the failure of the British authorities to understand until it was too
late the great advantages to be derived from the employment of Loyalist
levies. The truth is that the British officers did not think much more
highly of the Loyalists than they did of the rebels. For both they had
the Briton’s contempt for the colonial, and the professional soldier’s
contempt for the armed civilian.

Had more use been made of the Tories, the military history of the
Revolution might have been very different. They understood the conditions
of warfare in the New World much better than the British regulars or the
German mercenaries. Had the advice of prominent Loyalists been accepted
by the British commander at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, it is highly
probable that there would have been none of that carnage in the British
ranks which made of the victory a virtual defeat. It was said that
Burgoyne’s early successes were largely due to the skill with which he
used his Loyalist auxiliaries. And in the latter part of the war, it must
be confessed that the successes of the Loyalist troops far outshone those
of the British regulars. In the Carolinas Tarleton’s Loyal Cavalry swept
everything before them, until their defeat at the Cowpens by Daniel
Morgan. In southern New York Governor Tryon’s levies carried fire and
sword up the Hudson, into ‘Indigo Connecticut,’ and over into New Jersey.
Along the northern frontier, the Loyalist forces commanded by Sir John
Johnson and Colonel Butler made repeated incursions into the Mohawk,
Schoharie, and Wyoming valleys and, in each case, after leaving a trail
of desolation behind them, they withdrew to the Canadian border in good
order. The trouble was that, owing to the stupidity and incapacity of
Lord George Germain, the British minister who was more than any other man
responsible for the misconduct of the American War, these expeditions
were not made part of a properly concerted plan; and so they sank into
the category of isolated raids.

From the point of view of Canadian history, the most interesting of these
expeditions were those conducted by Sir John Johnson and Colonel Butler.
They were carried on with the Canadian border as their base-line. It
was by the men who were engaged in them that Upper Canada was at first
largely settled; and for a century and a quarter there have been levelled
against these men by American and even by English writers charges of
barbarism and inhumanity about which Canadians in particular are
interested to know the truth.

Most of Johnson’s and Butler’s men came from central or northern New
York. To explain how this came about it is necessary to make an excursion
into previous history. In 1738 there had come out to America a young
Irishman of good family named William Johnson. The famous naval hero, Sir
Peter Warren, who was an uncle of Johnson, had large tracts of land in
the Mohawk valley, in northern New York. These estates he employed his
nephew in administering; and, when he died, he bequeathed them to him. In
the meantime William Johnson had begun to improve his opportunities. He
had built up a prosperous trade with the Indians; he had learned their
language and studied their ways; and he had gained such an ascendancy
over them that he came to be known as ‘the Indian-tamer,’ and was
appointed the British superintendent-general for Indian Affairs. In the
Seven Years’ War he served with great distinction against the French. He
defeated Baron Dieskau at Lake George in 1755, and he captured Niagara
in 1759; for the first of these services he was created a baronet, and
received a pension of £5000 a year. During his later years he lived at
his house, Johnson Hall, on the Mohawk river; and he died in 1774, on the
eve of the American Revolution, leaving his title and his vast estates to
his only son, Sir John.

Just before his death Sir William Johnson had interested himself in
schemes for the colonization of his lands. In these he was remarkably
successful. He secured in the main two classes of immigrants, Germans
and Scottish Highlanders. Of the Highlanders he must have induced more
than one thousand to emigrate from Scotland, some of them as late as
1773. Many of them had been Jacobites; some of them had seen service
at Culloden Moor; and one of them, Alexander Macdonell, whose son
subsequently sat in the first legislature of Upper Canada, had been on
Bonnie Prince Charlie’s personal staff. These men had no love for the
Hanoverians; but their loyalty to their new chieftain, and their lack of
sympathy with American ideals, kept them at the time of the Revolution
true almost without exception to the British cause. King George had no
more faithful allies in the New World than these rebels of the ’45.

They were the first of the Loyalists to arm and organize themselves.
In the summer of 1775 Colonel Allan Maclean, a Scottish officer in
the English army, aided by Colonel Guy Johnson, a brother-in-law of
Sir John Johnson, raised a regiment in the Mohawk valley known as the
Royal Highland Emigrants, which he took to Canada, and which did good
service against the American invaders under Montgomery in the autumn
of the same year. In the spring of 1776 Sir John Johnson received word
that the revolutionary authorities had determined on his arrest, and
he was compelled to flee from Johnson Hall to Canada. With him he took
three hundred of his Scottish dependants; and he was followed by the
Mohawk Indians under their famous chief, Joseph Brant. In Canada Johnson
received a colonel’s commission to raise two Loyalist battalions of five
hundred men each, to be known as the King’s Royal Regiment of New York.
The full complement was soon made up from the numbers of Loyalists who
flocked across the border from other counties of northern New York; and
Sir John Johnson’s ‘Royal Greens,’ as they were commonly called, were
in the thick of nearly every border foray from that time until the end
of the war. It was by these men that the north shore of the St Lawrence
river, between Montreal and Kingston, was mainly settled. As the tide of
refugees swelled, other regiments were formed. Colonel John Butler, one
of Sir John Johnson’s right-hand men, organized his Loyal Rangers, a body
of irregular troops who adopted, with modifications, the Indian method of
warfare. It was against this corps that some of the most serious charges
of brutality and bloodthirstiness were made by American historians;
and it was by this corps that the Niagara district of Upper Canada was
settled after the war.

It is not possible here to give more than a brief sketch of the
operations of these troops. In 1777 they formed an important part of
the forces with which General Burgoyne, by way of Lake Champlain, and
Colonel St Leger, by way of Oswego, attempted, unsuccessfully, to reach
Albany. An offshoot of the first battalion of the ‘Royal Greens,’ known
as Jessup’s Corps, was with Burgoyne at Saratoga; and the rest of the
regiment was with St Leger, under the command of Sir John Johnson
himself. The ambuscade of Oriskany, where Sir John Johnson’s men first
met their Whig neighbours and relatives, who were defending Fort Stanwix,
was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Its ‘fratricidal butchery’
denuded the Mohawk valley of most of its male population; and it was said
that if Tryon county ‘smiled again during the war, it smiled through
tears.’ The battle was inconclusive, so bitterly was it contested; but it
was successful in stemming the advance of St Leger’s forces.

The next year (1778) there was an outbreak of sporadic raiding all along
the border. Alexander Macdonell, the former aide-de-camp of Bonnie Prince
Charlie, fell with three hundred Loyalists on the Dutch settlements of
the Schoharie valley and laid them waste. Macdonell’s ideas of border
warfare were derived from his Highland ancestors; and, as he expected
no quarter, he gave none. Colonel Butler, with his Rangers and a party
of Indians, descended into the valley of Wyoming, which was a sort of
debatable ground between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and carried fire
and sword through the settlements there. This raid was commemorated
by Thomas Campbell in a most unhistorical poem entitled _Gertrude of
Wyoming_:

    On Susquehana’s side, fair Wyoming!
    Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wall
    And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
    Of what thy gentle people did befall.

Later in the year Walter Butler, the son of Colonel John Butler, and
Joseph Brant, with a party of Loyalists and Mohawks, made a similar
inroad on Cherry Valley, south of Springfield in the state of New York.
On this occasion Brant’s Indians got beyond control, and more than fifty
defenceless old men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood.

The Americans took their revenge the following year. A large force under
General Sullivan invaded the settlements of the Six Nations Indians in
the Chemung and Genesee valleys, and exacted an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. They burned the villages, destroyed the crops, and
turned the helpless women and children out to face the coming winter.
Most of the Indians during the winter of 1779-80 were dependent on the
mercy of the British commissaries.

This kind of warfare tends to perpetuate itself indefinitely. In 1780
the Loyalists and Indians returned to the attack. In May Sir John
Johnson with his ‘Royal Greens’ made a descent into the Mohawk valley,
fell upon his ‘rebellious birthplace,’ and carried off rich booty and
many prisoners. In the early autumn, with a force composed of his own
regiment, two hundred of Butler’s Rangers, and some regulars and Indians,
he crossed over to the Schoharie valley, devastated it, and then returned
to the Mohawk valley, where he completed the work of the previous spring.
All attempts to crush him failed. At the battle of Fox’s Mills he escaped
defeat or capture by the American forces under General Van Rensselaer
largely on account of the dense smoke with which the air was filled from
the burning of barns and villages.

How far the Loyalists under Johnson and Butler were open to the charges
of inhumanity and barbarism so often levelled against them, is difficult
to determine. The charges are based almost wholly on unsubstantial
tradition. The greater part of the excesses complained of, it is safe to
say, were perpetrated by the Indians; and Sir John Johnson and Colonel
Butler can no more be blamed for the excesses of the Indians at Cherry
Valley than Montcalm can be blamed for their excesses at Fort William
Henry. It was unfortunate that the military opinion of that day regarded
the use of savages as necessary, and no one deplored this use more than
men like Haldimand and Carleton; but Washington and the Continental
Congress were as ready to receive the aid of the Indians as were the
British. The difficulty of the Americans was that most of the Indians
were on the other side.

That there were, however, atrocities committed by the Loyalists cannot
be doubted. Sir John Johnson himself told the revolutionists that ‘their
Tory neighbours, and not himself, were blameable for those acts.’ There
are well-authenticated cases of atrocities committed by Alexander
Macdonell: in 1781 he ordered his men to shoot down a prisoner taken
near Johnstown, and when the men bungled their task, Macdonell cut the
prisoner down with his broadsword. When Colonel Butler returned from
Cherry Valley, Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him, and wrote to
him that ‘such indiscriminate vengeance taken even upon the treacherous
and cruel enemy they are engaged against is useless and disreputable to
themselves, as it is contrary to the disposition and maxims of their King
whose cause they are fighting.’

But rumour exaggerated whatever atrocities there were. For many years the
Americans believed that the Tories had lifted scalps like the Indians;
and later, when the Americans captured York in 1813, they found what
they regarded as a signal proof of this barbarous practice among the
Loyalists, in the speaker’s wig, which was hanging beside the chair in
the legislative chamber! There may have been members of Butler’s Rangers
who borrowed from the Indians this hideous custom, just as there were
American frontiersmen who were guilty of it; but it must not be imagined
that it was a common practice on either side. Except at Cherry Valley,
there is no proof that any violence was done by the Loyalists to women
and children. On his return from Wyoming, Colonel Butler reported: ‘I can
with truth inform you that in the destruction of this settlement not a
single person has been hurt of the inhabitants, but such as were armed;
to those indeed the Indians gave no quarter.’

In defence of the Loyalists, two considerations may be urged. In the
first place, it must be remembered that they were men who had been
evicted from their homes, and whose property had been confiscated. They
had been placed under the ban of the law: the payment of their debts had
been denied them; and they had been forbidden to return to their native
land under penalty of death without benefit of clergy. They had been
imprisoned, fined, subjected to special taxation; their families had been
maltreated, and were in many cases still in the hands of their enemies.
They would have been hardly human had they waged a mimic warfare. In the
second place, their depredations were of great value from a military
point of view. Not only did they prevent thousands of militiamen from
joining the Continental army, but they seriously threatened the sources
of Washington’s food supply. The valleys which they ravaged were the
granary of the revolutionary forces. In 1780 Sir John Johnson destroyed
in the Schoharie valley alone no less than eighty thousand bushels of
grain; and this loss, as Washington wrote to the president of Congress,
‘threatened alarming consequences.’ That this work of destruction was
agreeable to the Loyalists cannot be doubted; but this fact does not
diminish its value as a military measure.




CHAPTER V

PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR


The war was brought to a virtual termination by the surrender of
Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The definitive articles of
peace were signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783. During the two
years that intervened between these events, the lot of the Loyalists was
one of gloomy uncertainty. They found it hard to believe that the British
government would abandon them to the mercy of their enemies; and yet
the temper of the revolutionists toward them continued such that there
seemed little hope of concession or conciliation. Success had not taught
the rebels the grace of forgiveness. At the capitulation of Yorktown,
Washington had refused to treat with the Loyalists in Cornwallis’s army
on the same terms as with the British regulars; and Cornwallis had been
compelled to smuggle his Loyalist levies out of Yorktown on the ship that
carried the news of his surrender to New York. As late as 1782 fresh
confiscation laws had been passed in Georgia and the Carolinas; and in
New York a law had been passed cancelling all debts due to Loyalists, on
condition that one-fortieth of the debt was paid into the state treasury.
These were straws which showed the way the wind was blowing.

In the negotiations leading up to the Peace of Versailles there were
no clauses so long and bitterly discussed as those relating to the
Loyalists. The British commissioners stood out at first for the principle
of complete amnesty to them and restitution of all they had lost; and
it is noteworthy that the French minister added his plea to theirs. But
Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues refused to agree to this formula.
They took the ground that they, as the representatives merely of the
Continental Congress, had not the right to bind the individual states in
such a matter. The argument was a quibble. Their real reason was that
they were well aware that public opinion in America would not support
them in such a concession. A few enlightened men in America, such as John
Adams, favoured a policy of compensation to the Loyalists, ‘how little
soever they deserve it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary’;
but the attitude of the great majority of the Americans had been clearly
demonstrated by a resolution passed in the legislature of Virginia on
December 17, 1782, to the effect that all demands for the restitution of
confiscated property were wholly inadmissible. Even some of the Loyalists
had begun to realize that a revolution which had touched property was
bound to be permanent, and that the American commissioners could no more
give back to them their confiscated lands than Charles II was able to
give back to his father’s cavaliers the estates they had lost in the
Civil War.

[Illustration: LORD CORNWALLIS

From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery]

The American commissioners agreed, finally, that no future confiscations
should take place, that imprisoned Loyalists should be released, that
no further persecutions should be permitted, and that creditors on
either side should ‘meet with no lawful impediment’ to the recovery of
all good debts in sterling money. But with regard to the British demand
for restitution, all they could be induced to sign was a promise that
Congress would ‘earnestly recommend to the legislatures of the respective
states’ a policy of amnesty and restitution.

In making this last recommendation, it is difficult not to convict the
American commissioners of something very like hypocrisy. There seems
to be no doubt that they knew the recommendation would not be complied
with; and little or no attempt was made by them to persuade the states
to comply with it. In after years the clause was represented by the
Americans as a mere form of words, necessary to bring the negotiations
to an end, and to save the face of the British government. To this day
it has remained, except in one or two states, a dead letter. On the
other hand it is impossible not to convict the British commissioners of
a betrayal of the Loyalists. ‘Never,’ said Lord North in the House of
Commons, ‘never was the honour, the humanity, the principles, the policy
of a nation so grossly abused, as in the desertion of those men who are
now exposed to every punishment that desertion and poverty can inflict,
because they were not rebels.’ ‘In ancient or in modern history,’ said
Lord Loughborough in the House of Lords, ‘there cannot be found an
instance of so shameful a desertion of men who have sacrificed all to
their duty and to their reliance upon our faith.’ It seems probable that
the British commissioners could have obtained, on paper at any rate,
better terms for the Loyalists. It is very doubtful if the Americans
would have gone to war again over such a question. In 1783 the position
of Great Britain was relatively not weaker, but stronger, than in 1781,
when hostilities had ceased. The attitude of the French minister, and the
state of the French finances, made it unlikely that France would lend her
support to further hostilities. And there is no doubt that the American
states were even more sorely in need of peace than was Great Britain.

When the terms of peace were announced, great was the bitterness among
the Loyalists. One of them protested in _Rivington’s Gazette_ that ‘even
robbers, murderers, and rebels are faithful to their fellows and never
betray each other,’ and another sang,

    ’Tis an honour to serve the bravest of nations,
    And be left to be hanged in their capitulations.

If the terms of the peace had been observed, the plight of the Loyalists
would have been bad enough. But as it was, the outcome proved even
worse. Every clause in the treaty relating to the Loyalists was broken
over and over again. There was no sign of an abatement of the popular
feeling against them; indeed, in some places, the spirit of persecution
seemed to blaze out anew. One of Washington’s bitterest sayings was
uttered at this time, when he said of the Loyalists that ‘he could see
nothing better for them than to commit suicide.’ Loyalist creditors
found it impossible to recover their debts in America, while they were
themselves sued in the British courts by their American creditors, and
their property was still being confiscated by the American legislatures.
The legislature of New York publicly declined to reverse its policy
of confiscation, on the ground that Great Britain had offered no
compensation for the property which her friends had destroyed. Loyalists
who ventured to return home under the treaty of peace were insulted,
tarred and feathered, whipped, and even ham-strung. All over the country
there were formed local committees or associations with the object of
preventing renewed intercourse with the Loyalists and the restitution
of Loyalist property. ‘The proceedings of these people,’ wrote Sir Guy
Carleton, ‘are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a
pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a
desire of rapine are the great incentives.’

The Loyalists were even denied civil rights in most of the states. In
1784 an act was passed in New York declaring that all who had held
office under the British, or helped to fit out vessels of war, or who had
served as privates or officers in the British Army, or who had left the
state, were guilty of ‘misprision of treason,’ and were disqualified from
both the franchise and public office. There was in fact hardly a state in
1785 where the Loyalist was allowed to vote. In New York Loyalist lawyers
were not allowed to practise until April 1786, and then only on condition
of taking an ‘oath of abjuration and allegiance.’ In the same state,
Loyalists were subjected to such invidious special taxation that in 1785
one of them confessed that ‘those in New York whose estates have not been
confiscated are so loaded with taxes and other grievances that there is
nothing left but to sell out and move into the protection of the British
government.’

It was clear that something would have to be done by the British
government for the Loyalists’ relief. ‘It is utterly impossible,’ wrote
Sir Guy Carleton to Lord North, ‘to leave exposed to the rage and
violence of these people [the Americans] men of character whose only
offence has been their attachment to the King’s service.’ Accordingly
the British government made amends for its betrayal of the Loyalists by
taking them under its wing. It arranged for the transportation of all
those who wished to leave the revolted states; it offered them homes
in the provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec; it granted half-pay to the
officers after their regiments were reduced; and it appointed a royal
commission to provide compensation for the losses sustained.

[Illustration: UPPER AND LOWER CANADA AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES AT THE
TIME OF THE LOYALISTS SETTLEMENTS]




CHAPTER VI

THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA


When the terms of peace became known, tens of thousands of the Loyalists
shook the dust of their ungrateful country from their feet, never to
return. Of these the more influential part, both during and after the
war, sailed for England. The royal officials, the wealthy merchants,
landowners, and professional men, the high military officers—these went
to England to press their claims for compensation and preferment. The
humbler element, for the most part, migrated to the remaining British
colonies in North America. About two hundred families went to the West
Indies, a few to Newfoundland, many to what were afterwards called Upper
and Lower Canada, and a vast army to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island.

The advantages of Nova Scotia as a field for immigration had been known
to the people of New England and New York before the Revolutionary War
had broken out. Shortly after the Peace of 1763 parts of the Nova Scotian
peninsula and the banks of the river St John had been sparsely settled by
colonists from the south; and during the Revolutionary War considerable
sympathy with the cause of the Continental Congress was shown by these
colonists from New England. Nova Scotia, moreover, was contiguous to the
New England colonies, and it was therefore not surprising that after the
Revolution the Loyalists should have turned their eyes to Nova Scotia as
a refuge for their families.

The first considerable migration took place at the time of the evacuation
of Boston by General Howe in March 1776. Boston was at that time a town
with a population of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, and of these
nearly one thousand accompanied the British Army to Halifax. ‘Neither
Hell, Hull, nor Halifax,’ said one of them, ‘can afford worse shelter
than Boston.’ The embarkation was accomplished amid the most hopeless
confusion. ‘Nothing can be more diverting,’ wrote a Whig, ‘than to see
the town in its present situation; all is uproar and confusion; carts,
trucks, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, coaches, chaises, all driving as if
the very devil was after them.’ The fleet was composed of every vessel
on which hands could be laid. In Benjamin Hallowell’s cabin ‘there were
thirty-seven persons—men, women, and children; servants, masters, and
mistresses—obliged to pig together on the floor, there being no berths.’
It was a miracle that the crazy flotilla arrived safely at Halifax; but
there it arrived after tossing about for six days in the March tempests.
General Howe remained with his army at Halifax until June. Then he set
sail for New York. Some of the Loyalists accompanied him to New York, but
the greater number took passage for England. Only a few of the company
remained in Nova Scotia.

From 1776 to 1783 small bodies of Loyalists continually found their
way to Halifax; but it was not until the evacuation of New York by the
British in 1783 that the full tide of immigration set in. As soon as news
leaked out that the terms of peace were not likely to be favourable,
and it became evident that the animus of the Whigs showed no signs of
abating, the Loyalists gathered in New York looked about for a country in
which to begin life anew. Most of them were too poor to think of going to
England, and the British provinces to the north seemed the most hopeful
place of resort. In 1782 several associations were formed in New York
for the purpose of furthering the interests of those who proposed to
settle in Nova Scotia. One of these associations had as its president
the famous Dr Seabury, and as its secretary Sampson Salter Blowers,
afterwards chief justice of Nova Scotia. Its officers waited on Sir Guy
Carleton, and received his approval of their plans. It was arranged
that a first instalment of about five hundred colonists should set out
in the autumn of 1782, in charge of three agents, Amos Botsford, Samuel
Cummings, and Frederick Hauser, whose duty it should be to spy out the
land and obtain grants.

The party sailed from New York, in nine transport ships, on October 19,
1782, and arrived a few days later at Annapolis Royal. The population
of Annapolis, which was only a little over a hundred, was soon swamped
by the numbers that poured out of the transports. ‘All the houses and
barracks are crowded,’ wrote the Rev. Jacob Bailey, who was then at
Annapolis, ‘and many are unable to procure any lodgings.’ The three
agents, leaving the colonists at Annapolis, went first to Halifax, and
then set out on a trip of exploration through the Annapolis valley, after
which they crossed the Bay of Fundy and explored the country adjacent to
the river St John. On their return they published glowing accounts of the
country, and their report was transmitted to their friends in New York.

The result of the favourable reports sent in by these agents, and by
others who had gone ahead, was an invasion of Nova Scotia such as no
one, not even the provincial authorities, had begun to expect. As the
names of the thousands who were anxious to go to Nova Scotia poured into
the adjutant-general’s office in New York, it became clear to Sir Guy
Carleton that with the shipping facilities at his disposal he could not
attempt to transport them all at once. It was decided that the ships
would have to make two trips; and, as a matter of fact, most of them made
three or four trips before the last British soldier was able to leave the
New York shore.

On April 26, 1783, the first or ‘spring’ fleet set sail. It had on board
no less than seven thousand persons, men, women, children, and servants.
Half of these went to the mouth of the river St John, and about half to
Port Roseway, at the south-west end of the Nova Scotian peninsula. The
voyage was fair, and the ships arrived at their destinations without
mishap. But at St John at least, the colonists found that almost no
preparations had been made to receive them. They were disembarked on
a wild and primeval shore, where they had to clear away the brushwood
before they could pitch their tents or build their shanties. The prospect
must have been disheartening. ‘Nothing but wilderness before our eyes,
the women and children did not refrain from tears,’ wrote one of the
exiles; and the grandmother of Sir Leonard Tilley used to tell her
descendants, ‘I climbed to the top of Chipman’s Hill and watched the
sails disappearing in the distance, and such a feeling of loneliness came
over me that, although I had not shed a tear through all the war, I sat
down on the damp moss with my baby in my lap and cried.’

All summer and autumn the ships kept plying to and fro. In June the
‘summer fleet’ brought about 2500 colonists to St John River, Annapolis,
Port Roseway, and Fort Cumberland. By August 23 John Parr, the governor
of Nova Scotia, wrote that ‘upward of 12,000 souls have already arrived
from New York,’ and that as many more were expected. By the end of
September he estimated that 18,000 had arrived, and stated that 10,000
more were still to come. By the end of the year he computed the total
immigration to have amounted to 30,000. As late as January 15, 1784,
the refugees were still arriving. On that date Governor Parr wrote to
Lord North announcing the arrival of ‘a considerable number of Refugee
families, who must be provided for in and about the town at extraordinary
expence, as at this season of the year I cannot send them into the
country.’ ‘I cannot,’ he added, ‘better describe the wretched condition
of these people than by inclosing your lordship a list of those just
arrived in the Clinton transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly
women and children, all still on board, as I have not yet been able to
find any sort of place for them, and the cold setting in severe.’ There
is a tradition in Halifax that the cabooses had to be taken off the
ships, and ranged along the principal street, in order to shelter these
unfortunates during the winter.

New York was evacuated by the British troops on November 25, 1783. Sir
Guy Carleton did not withdraw from the city until he was satisfied that
every person who desired the protection of the British flag was embarked
on the boats. During the latter half of the year Carleton was repeatedly
requested by Congress to fix some precise limit to his occupation of New
York. He replied briefly, but courteously, that he was doing the best he
could, and that no man could do more. When Congress objected that the
Loyalists were not included in the agreement with regard to evacuation,
Carleton replied that he held opposite views; and that in any case it was
a point of honour with him that no troops should embark until the last
person who claimed his protection should be safely on board a British
ship. As time went on, his replies to Congress grew shorter and more
incisive. On being requested to name an outside date for the evacuation
of the city, he declared that he could not even guess when the last ship
would be loaded, but that he was resolved to remain until it was. He
pointed out, moreover, that the more the uncontrolled violence of their
citizens drove refugees to his protection, the longer would evacuation
be delayed. ‘I should show,’ he said, ‘an indifference to the feelings
of humanity, as well as to the honour and interest of the nation whom
I serve, to leave any of the Loyalists that are desirous to quit the
country, a prey to the violence they conceive they have so much cause to
apprehend.’

After the evacuation of New York, therefore, the number of refugee
Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia was small and insignificant. In 1784
and 1785 there arrived a few persons who had tried to take up the thread
of their former life in the colonies, but had given up the attempt. And
in August 1784 the _Sally_ transport from London cast anchor at Halifax
with three hundred destitute refugees on board. ‘As if there was not a
sufficiency of such distress’d objects already in this country,’ wrote
Edward Winslow from Halifax, ‘the good people of England have collected
a whole ship load of all kinds of vagrants from the streets of London,
and sent them out to Nova Scotia. Great numbers died on the passage
of various disorders—the miserable remnant are landed here and have
now no covering but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a
proportion of provisions at my door.’

But the increase of population in Nova Scotia from immigration during
the years immediately following 1783 was partly counterbalanced by the
defections from the province. Many of the refugees quailed before the
prospect of carving out a home in the wilderness. ‘It is, I think, the
roughest land I ever saw’; ‘I am totally discouraged’; ‘I am sick of
this Province’—such expressions as these abound in the journals and
diaries of the settlers. There were complaints that deception had been
practised. ‘All our golden promises,’ wrote a Long Island Loyalist, ‘are
vanished in smoke. We were taught to believe this place was not barren
and foggy as had been represented, but we find it ten times worse. We
have nothing but his Majesty’s rotten pork and unbaked flour to subsist
on.... It is the most inhospitable clime that ever mortal set foot on.’
At first there was great distress among the refugees. The immigration of
1783 had at one stroke trebled the population of Nova Scotia; and the
resources of the province were inadequate to meet the demand on them.
‘Nova Scarcity’ was the nickname for the province invented by a New
England wit. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that some who
had set their hand to the plough turned back. Some of them went to Upper
Canada; some to England; some to the states from which they had come;
for within a few years the fury of the anti-Loyalist feeling died down,
and not a few Loyalists took advantage of this to return to the place of
their birth.

The most careful analysis of the Loyalist immigration into the Maritime
Provinces has placed the total number of immigrants at about 35,000.
These were in settlements scattered broadcast over the face of the map.
There was a colony of 3000 in Cape Breton, which afforded an ideal field
for settlement, since before 1783 the governor of Nova Scotia had been
precluded from granting lands there. In 1784 Cape Breton was erected
into a separate government, with a lieutenant-governor of its own; and
settlers flocked into it from Halifax, and even from Canada. Abraham
Cuyler, formerly mayor of Albany, led a considerable number down the
St Lawrence and through the Gulf to Cape Breton. On the mainland of
Nova Scotia there were settlements at Halifax, at Shelburne, at Fort
Cumberland, at Annapolis and Digby, at Port Mouton, and at other places.
In what is now New Brunswick there was a settlement at Passamaquoddy Bay,
and there were other settlements on the St John river extending from
the mouth up past what is now the city of Fredericton. In Prince Edward
Island, then called the Island of St John, there was a settlement which
is variously estimated in size, but which was comparatively unimportant.

The most interesting of these settlements was that at Shelburne, which is
situated at the south-west corner of Nova Scotia, on one of the finest
harbours of the Atlantic seaboard. The name of the harbour was originally
Port Razoir, but this was corrupted by the English settlers into Port
Roseway. The place had been settled previous to 1783. In 1775 Colonel
Alexander McNutt, a notable figure of the pre-Loyalist days in Nova
Scotia, had obtained a grant of 100,000 acres about the harbour, and had
induced about a dozen Scottish and Irish families to settle there. This
settlement he had dignified with the name of New Jerusalem. In a short
time, however, New Jerusalem languished and died, and when the Loyalists
arrived in May 1783, the only inhabitants of the place were two or three
fishermen and their families. It would have been well if the Loyalists
had listened to the testimony of one of these men, who, when he was asked
how he came to be there, replied that ‘poverty had brought him there, and
poverty had kept him there.’

The project of settling the shores of Port Roseway had its birth in the
autumn of 1782, when one hundred and twenty Loyalist families, whose
attention had been directed to that part of Nova Scotia by a friend in
Massachusetts, banded together with the object of emigrating thither.
They first appointed a committee of seven to make arrangements for their
removal; and, a few weeks later, they commissioned two members of the
association, Joseph Pynchon and James Dole, to go to Halifax and lay
before Governor Parr their desires and intentions. Pynchon and Dole,
on their arrival at Halifax, had an interview with the governor, and
obtained from him very satisfactory arrangements. The governor agreed
to give the settlers the land about Port Roseway which they desired. He
promised them that surveyors should be sent to lay out the grants, that
carpenters and a supply of 400,000 feet of lumber should be furnished
for building their houses, that for the first year at least the settlers
should receive army rations, and that they should be free for ever from
impressment in the British Navy. All these promises were made on the
distinct understanding that they should interfere in no way with the
claims of the Loyalists on the British government for compensation for
losses sustained in the war. Elated by the reception they had received
from the governor, the agents wrote home enthusiastic accounts of the
prospects of the venture. Pynchon even hinted that the new town would
supersede Halifax. ‘Much talk is here,’ he wrote, ‘of capital of
Province.... Halifax can’t but be sensible that Port Roseway, if properly
attended to in encouraging settlers of every denomination, will have much
the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What
the consequence will be time only will reveal.’ Many persons at Halifax,
wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and
recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St
John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears
to jealousy. A few years’ experience must have convinced him that his
suspicions were ill-founded.

The first instalment of settlers, about four thousand in number, arrived
in May 1783. They found nothing but the virgin wilderness confronting
them. But they set to work with a will to clear the land and build
their houses. ‘As soon as we had set up a kind of tent,’ wrote the Rev.
Jonathan Beecher in his Journal, ‘we knelt down, my wife and I and my
two boys, and kissed the dear ground and thanked God that the flag of
England floated there, and resolved that we would work with the rest
to become again prosperous and happy.’ By July 11 the work of clearing
had been so far advanced that it became possible to allot the lands.
The town had been laid out in five long parallel streets, with other
streets crossing them at right angles. Each associate was given a town
lot fronting on one of these streets, as well as a water lot facing the
harbour, and a fifty-acre farm in the surrounding country. With the aid
of the government artisans, the wooden houses were rapidly run up; and in
a couple of months a town sprang up where before had been the forest and
some fishermen’s huts.

At the end of July Governor Parr paid the town a visit, and christened
it, curiously enough, with the name of Shelburne, after the British
statesman who was responsible for the Peace of Versailles. The occasion
was one of great ceremony. His Excellency, as he landed from the sloop
_Sophie_, was saluted by the booming of cannon from the ships and from
the shore. He proceeded up the main street, through a lane of armed men.
At the place appointed for his reception he was met by the magistrates
and principal citizens, and presented with an address. In the evening
there was a dinner given by Captain Mowat on board the _Sophie_; and the
next evening there was another dinner at the house of Justice Robertson,
followed by a ball given by the citizens, which was ‘conducted with the
greatest festivity and decorum,’ and ‘did not break up till five the
next morning.’ Parr was delighted with Shelburne, and wrote to Sir Guy
Carleton, ‘From every appearance I have not a doubt but that it will in a
short time become the most flourishing Town for trade of any in this part
of the world, and the country will for agriculture.’

For a few years it looked as though Shelburne was not going to belie
these hopes. The autumn of 1783 brought a considerable increase to its
population; and in 1784 it seems to have numbered no less than ten
thousand souls, including the suburb of Burchtown, in which most of
the negro refugees in New York had been settled. It became a place of
business and fashion. There was for a time an extensive trade in fish
and lumber with Great Britain and the West Indies. Shipyards were built,
from which was launched the first ship built in Nova Scotia after the
British occupation. Shops, taverns, churches, coffee-houses, sprang up.
At one time no less than three newspapers were published in the town. The
military were stationed there, and on summer evenings the military band
played on the promenade near the bridge. On election day the main street
was so crowded that ‘one might have walked on the heads of the people.’

Then Shelburne fell into decay. It appeared that the region was
ill-suited for farming and grazing, and was not capable of supporting
so large a population. The whale fishery which the Shelburne merchants
had established in Brazilian waters proved a failure. The regulations
of the Navigation Acts thwarted their attempts to set up a coasting
trade. Failure dogged all their enterprises, and soon the glory of
Shelburne departed. It became like a city of the dead. ‘The houses,’
wrote Haliburton, ‘were still standing though untenanted. It had all the
stillness and quiet of a moonlight scene. It was difficult to imagine
it was deserted. The idea of repose more readily suggested itself than
decay. All was new and recent. Seclusion, and not death or removal,
appeared to be the cause of the absence of inhabitants.’ The same
eye-witness of Shelburne’s ruin described the town later:

    The houses, which had been originally built of wood, had
    severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and
    removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted
    into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and
    decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the
    spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the
    blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the
    size of the tenement and the means of its owner. In some places
    they had sunk with the edifice, leaving a heap of ruins, while
    not a few were inclining to their fall, and awaiting the first
    storm to repose again in the dust that now covered those who
    had constructed them. Hundreds of cellars with their stone
    walls and granite partitions were everywhere to be seen like
    uncovered monuments of the dead. Time and decay had done their
    work. All that was perishable had perished, and those numerous
    vaults spoke of a generation that had passed away for ever, and
    without the aid of an inscription, told a tale of sorrow and of
    sadness that overpowered the heart.

Alas for the dreams of the Pynchons and the Parrs! Shelburne is now a
quaint and picturesque town; but it is not the city which its projectors
planned.




CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK


When Governor Parr wrote to Sir Guy Carleton, commending in such warm
terms the advantages of Shelburne, he took occasion at the same time
to disparage the country about the river St John. ‘I greatly fear,’ he
wrote, ‘the soil and fertility of that part of this province is overrated
by people who have explored it partially. I wish it may turn out
otherwise, but have my fears that there is scarce good land enough for
them already sent there.’

How Governor Parr came to make so egregious a mistake with regard to
the comparative merits of the Shelburne districts and those of the
St John river it is difficult to understand. Edward Winslow frankly
accused him of jealousy of the St John settlements. Possibly he was only
too well aware of the inadequacy of the preparations made to receive
the Loyalists at the mouth of the St John, and wished to divert the
stream of immigration elsewhere. At any rate his opinion was in direct
conflict with the unanimous testimony of the agents sent to report on
the land. Botsford, Cummings, and Hauser had reported: ‘The St John
is a fine river, equal in magnitude to the Connecticut or Hudson. At
the mouth of the river is a fine harbour, accessible at all seasons of
the year—never frozen or obstructed by ice.... There are many settlers
along the river upon the interval land, who get their living easily.
The interval lies on the river, and is a most fertile soil, annually
matured by the overflowing of the river, and produces crops of all kinds
with little labour, and vegetables in the greatest perfection, parsnips
of great length, etc.’ Later Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Allen and Edward
Winslow, the muster-master-general of the provincial forces, were sent
up as agents for the Loyalist regiments in New York, and they explored
the river for one hundred and twenty miles above its mouth. ‘We have
returned,’ wrote Winslow after his trip, ‘delighted beyond expression.’

Governor Parr’s fears, therefore, had little effect on the popularity of
the St John river district. In all, no less than ten thousand people
settled on the north side of the Bay of Fundy in 1783. These came, in
the main, in three divisions. With the spring fleet arrived about three
thousand people; with the summer fleet not quite two thousand; and with
the autumn fleet well over three thousand. Of those who came in the
spring and summer most were civilian refugees; but of those who arrived
in the autumn nearly all were disbanded soldiers. Altogether thirteen
distinct corps settled on the St John river. There were the King’s
American Dragoons, De Lancey’s First and Second Battalions, the New
Jersey Volunteers, the King’s American Regiment, the Maryland Loyalists,
the 42nd Regiment, the Prince of Wales American Regiment, the New York
Volunteers, the Royal Guides and Pioneers, the Queen’s Rangers, the
Pennsylvania Loyalists, and Arnold’s American Legion. All these regiments
were reduced, of course, to a fraction of their original strength, owing
to the fact that numbers of their men had been discharged in New York,
and that many of the officers had gone to England. But nevertheless, with
their women and children, their numbers were not far from four thousand.

The arrangements which the government of Nova Scotia had made for
the reception of this vast army of people were sadly inadequate. In
the first place there was an unpardonable delay in the surveying and
allotment of lands. This may be partly explained by the insufficient
number of surveyors at the disposal of the governor, and by the tedious
and difficult process of escheating lands already granted; but it is
impossible not to convict the governor and his staff of want of foresight
and expedition in making arrangements and carrying them into effect.
When Joseph Aplin arrived at Parrtown, as the settlement at the mouth
of the river was for a short time called, he found 1500 frame houses
and 400 log huts erected, but no one had yet received a title to the
land on which his house was built. The case of the detachment of the
King’s American Dragoons who had settled near the mouth of the river was
particularly hard. They had arrived in advance of the other troops, and
had settled on the west side of the harbour of St John, in what Edward
Winslow described as ‘one of the pleasantest spots I ever beheld.’ They
had already made considerable improvements on their lands, when word came
that the government had determined to reserve the lands about the mouth
of the river for the refugees, and to allot blocks of land farther up
the river to the various regiments of provincial troops. When news of
this decision reached the officers of the provincial regiments, there
was great indignation. ‘This is so notorious a forfeiture of the faith
of government,’ wrote Colonel De Lancey to Edward Winslow, ‘that it
appears to me almost incredible, and yet I fear it is not to be doubted.
Could we have known this a little earlier it would have saved you the
trouble of exploring the country for the benefit of a people you are not
connected with. In short it is a subject too disagreeable to say more
upon.’ Winslow, who was hot-headed, talked openly about the provincials
defending the lands on which they had ‘squatted.’ But protests were in
vain; and the King’s American Dragoons were compelled to abandon their
settlement, and to remove up the river to the district of Prince William.
When the main body of the Loyalist regiments arrived in the autumn they
found that the blocks of land assigned to them had not yet been surveyed.
Of their distress and perplexity there is a picture in one of Edward
Winslow’s letters.

    I saw [he says] all those Provincial Regiments, which we have
    so frequently mustered, landing in this inhospitable climate,
    in the month of October, without shelter, and without knowing
    where to find a place to reside. The chagrin of the officers
    was not to me so truly affecting as the poignant distress of
    the men. Those respectable sergeants of Robinson’s, Ludlow’s,
    Cruger’s, Fanning’s, etc.—once hospitable yeomen of the
    country—were addressing me in language which almost murdered me
    as I heard it. ‘Sir, we have served all the war, your honour is
    witness how faithfully. We were promised land; we expected you
    had obtained it for us. We like the country—only let us have a
    spot of our own, and give us such kind of regulations as will
    hinder bad men from injuring us.’

Many of these men had ultimately to go up the river more than fifty miles
past what is now Fredericton.

A second difficulty was that food and building materials supplied by
government proved inadequate. At first the settlers were given lumber
and bricks and tools to build their houses, but the later arrivals, who
had as a rule to go farthest up the river, were compelled to find their
building materials in the forest. Even the King’s American Dragoons,
evicted from their lands on the harbour of St John, were ordered to build
their huts ‘without any public expence.’ Many were compelled to spend
the winter in tents banked up with snow; others sheltered themselves in
huts of bark. The privations and sufferings which many of the refugees
suffered were piteous. Some, especially among the women and children,
died from cold and exposure and insufficient food.

In the third place there was great inequality in the area of the lands
allotted. When the first refugees arrived, it was not expected that so
many more would follow; and consequently the earlier grants were much
larger in size than the later. In Parrtown a town lot at length shrank
in size to one-sixteenth of what it had originally been. There was
doubtless also some favouritism and respect of persons in the granting
of lands. At any rate the inequality of the grants caused a great many
grievances among a certain class of refugees. Chief Justice Finucane of
Nova Scotia was sent by Governor Parr to attempt to smooth matters out;
but his conduct seemed to accentuate the ill-feeling and alienate from
the Nova Scotia authorities the good-will of some of the better class of
Loyalists.

It was not surprising, under these circumstances, that Governor Parr
and the officers of his government should have become very unpopular
on the north side of the Bay of Fundy. Governor Parr was himself much
distressed over the ill-feeling against him among the Loyalists; and it
should be explained that his failure to satisfy them did not arise from
unwillingness to do anything in his power to make them comfortable. The
trouble was that his executive ability had not been sufficient to cope
with the serious problems confronting him. Out of the feeling against
Governor Parr arose an agitation to have the country north of the Bay
of Fundy removed from his jurisdiction altogether, and erected into a
separate government. This idea of the division of the province had been
suggested by Edward Winslow as early as July 1783: ‘Think what multitudes
have and will come here, and then judge whether it must not from the
nature of things immediately become a separate government.’ There were
good reasons why such a change should be made. The distance of Parrtown
from Halifax made it very difficult and tedious to transact business
with the government; and the Halifax authorities, being old inhabitants,
were not in complete sympathy with the new settlers. The erection of a
new province, moreover, would provide offices for many of the Loyalists
who were pressing their claims for place on the government at home. The
settlers, therefore, brought their influence to bear on the Imperial
authorities, through their friends in London; and in the summer of 1784
they succeeded in effecting the division they desired, in spite of the
opposition of Governor Parr and the official class at Halifax. Governor
Parr, indeed, had a narrow escape from being recalled.

The new province, which it was intended at first to call New Ireland, but
which was eventually called New Brunswick, was to include all that part
of Nova Scotia north of a line running across the isthmus from the mouth
of the Missiquash river to its source, and thence across to the nearest
part of Baie Verte. This boundary was another triumph for the Loyalists,
as it placed in New Brunswick Fort Cumberland and the greater part of
Cumberland county. The government of the province was offered first to
General Fox, who had been in command at Halifax in 1783, and then to
General Musgrave; but was declined by both. It was eventually accepted
by Colonel Thomas Carleton, a brother of Sir Guy Carleton, by whom it
was held for over thirty years. The chief offices of government fell
to Loyalists who were in London. The secretary of the province was the
Rev. Jonathan Odell, a witty New Jersey divine, who had been secretary
to Sir Guy Carleton in New York. It is interesting to note that Odell’s
son, the Hon. W. F. Odell, was secretary of the province after him, and
that between them they held the office for two-thirds of a century. The
chief justice was a former judge of the Supreme Court of New York; the
other judges were retired officers of regiments who had fought in the
war. The attorney-general was Jonathan Bliss, of Massachusetts; and the
solicitor-general was Ward Chipman, the friend and correspondent of
Edward Winslow. Winslow himself, whose charming letters throw such a
flood of light on the settlement of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, was
a member of the council. New Brunswick was indeed _par excellence_ the
Loyalist province.

[Illustration: THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON—BUILT 1787]

The new governor arrived at Parrtown on November 21, 1784, and was
immediately presented with an enthusiastic address of welcome by the
inhabitants. They described themselves as ‘a number of oppressed and
insulted Loyalists,’ and added that they had formerly been freemen,
and again hoped to be so under his government. Next spring the governor
granted to Parrtown incorporation as a city under the name of St John.
The name Parrtown had been given, it appears, at the request of Governor
Parr himself, who explained apologetically that the suggestion had arisen
out of ‘female vanity’; and in view of Governor Parr’s unpopularity,
the change of name was very welcome. At the same time, however, Colonel
Carleton greatly offended the people of St John by removing the capital
of the province up the river to St Anne’s, to which he gave the name
Fredericktown (Fredericton) in honour of the Duke of York.

On October 15, 1785, writs were issued for the election of members
to serve in a general assembly. The province was divided into eight
counties, among which were apportioned twenty-six members. The right to
vote was given by Governor Carleton to all males of twenty-one years
of age who had been three months in the province, the object of this
very democratic franchise being to include in the voting list settlers
who were clearing their lands, but had not yet received their grants.
The elections were held in November, and lasted for fifteen days. They
passed off without incident, except in the city of St John. There a
struggle took place which throws a great deal of light on the bitterness
of social feeling among the Loyalists. The inhabitants split into two
parties, known as the Upper Cove and the Lower Cove. The Upper Cove
represented the aristocratic element, and the Lower Cove the democratic.
For some time class feeling had been growing; it had been aroused by the
attempt of fifty-five gentlemen of New York to obtain for themselves,
on account of their social standing and services during the war, grants
of land in Nova Scotia of five thousand acres each; and it had been
fanned into flame by the inequality in the size of the lots granted
in St John itself. Unfortunately, among the six Upper Cove candidates
in St John there were two officers of the government, Jonathan Bliss
and Ward Chipman; and thus the struggle took on the appearance of one
between government and opposition candidates. The election was bitterly
contested, under the old method of open voting; and as it proceeded it
became clear that the Lower Cove was polling a majority of the votes. The
defeat of the government officers, it was felt, would be such a calamity
that at the scrutiny Sheriff Oliver struck off over eighty votes, and
returned the Upper Cove candidates. The election was protested, but the
House of Assembly refused, on a technicality, to upset the election. A
strangely ill-worded and ungrammatical petition to have the assembly
dissolved was presented to the governor by the Lower Cove people, but
Governor Carleton refused to interfere, and the Upper Cove candidates
kept their seats. The incident created a great deal of indignation in St
John, and Ward Chipman and Jonathan Bliss were not able for many years to
obtain a majority in that riding.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CARD USED IN THE FIRST NEW BRUNSWICK
ELECTION, 1785]

It is evident from these early records that, while there were members
of the oldest and most famous families in British America among the
Loyalists of the Thirteen Colonies, the majority of those who came to
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and especially to Upper Canada, were people
of very humble origin. Of the settlers in Nova Scotia, Governor Parr
expressed his regret ‘that there is not a sufficient proportion of men
of education and abilities among the present adventurers.’ The election
in St John was a sufficient evidence of the strength of the democratic
element there; and their petition to Governor Carleton is a sufficient
evidence of their illiteracy. Some of the settlers assumed pretensions
to which they were not entitled. An amusing case is that of William
Newton. This man had been the groom of the Honourable George Hanger, a
major in the British Legion during the war. Having come to Nova Scotia,
he began to pay court to a wealthy widow, and introduced himself to her
by affirming ‘that he was particularly connected with the hono’ble Major
Hanger, and that his circumstances were rather affluent, having served in
a money-making department, and that he had left a considerable property
behind him.’ The widow applied to Edward Winslow, who assured her that
Mr Newton had indeed been connected—very closely—with the Honourable
Major Hanger, and that he had left a large property behind him. ‘The
nuptials were immediately celebrated with great pomp, and Mr Newton is at
present,’ wrote Winslow, ‘a gentleman of consideration in Nova Scotia.’

During 1785 and subsequent years, the work of settlement went on rapidly
in New Brunswick. There was hardship and privation at first, and up to
1792 some indigent settlers received rations from the government. But
astonishing progress was made. ‘The new settlements of the Loyalists,’
wrote Colonel Thomas Dundas, who visited New Brunswick in the winter of
1786-87, ‘are in a thriving way.’ Apparently, however, he did not think
highly of the industry of the disbanded soldiers, for he avowed that ‘rum
and idle habits contracted during the war are much against them.’ But
he paid a compliment to the half-pay officers. ‘The half-pay provincial
officers,’ he wrote, ‘are valuable settlers, as they are enabled to live
well and improve their lands.’

It took some time for the province to settle down. Many who found their
lands disappointing moved to other parts of the province; and after
1790 numbers went to Upper Canada. But gradually the settlers adjusted
themselves to their environment, and New Brunswick entered on that era of
prosperity which has been hers ever since.




CHAPTER VIII

IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND


Not many Loyalists found their way to Prince Edward Island, or, as it was
called at the time of the American Revolution, the Island of St John.
Probably there were not many more than six hundred on the island at any
one time. But the story of these immigrants forms a chapter in itself.
Elsewhere the refugees were well and loyally treated. In Nova Scotia and
Quebec the English officials strove to the best of their ability, which
was perhaps not always great, to make provision for them. But in Prince
Edward Island they were the victims of treachery and duplicity.

Prince Edward Island was in 1783 owned by a number of large landed
proprietors. When it became known that the British government intended
to settle the Loyalists in Nova Scotia, these proprietors presented a
petition to Lord North, declaring their desire to afford asylum to such
as would settle on the island. To this end they offered to resign certain
of their lands for colonization, on condition that the government abated
the quit-rents. This petition was favourably received by the government,
and a proclamation was issued promising lands to settlers in Prince
Edward Island on terms similar to those granted to settlers in Nova
Scotia and Quebec.

Encouraged by the liberal terms held forth, a number of Loyalists went to
the island direct from New York, and a number went later from Shelburne,
disappointed by the prospects there. In June 1784 a muster of Loyalists
on the island was taken, which showed a total of about three hundred and
eighty persons, and during the remainder of the year a couple of hundred
went from Shelburne. At the end of 1784, therefore, it is safe to assume
that there were nearly six hundred on the island, or about one-fifth of
the total population.

These refugees found great difficulty in obtaining the grants of land
promised to them. They were allowed to take up their residence on certain
lands, being assured that their titles were secure; and then, after they
had cleared the lands, erected buildings, planted orchards, and made
other improvements, they were told that their titles lacked validity,
and they were forced to move. Written title-deeds were withheld on every
possible pretext, and when they were granted they were found to contain
onerous conditions out of harmony with the promises made. The object of
the proprietors, in inflicting these persecutions, seems to have been to
force the settlers to become tenants instead of freeholders. Even Colonel
Edmund Fanning, the Loyalist lieutenant-governor, was implicated in this
conspiracy. Fanning was one of the proprietors in Township No. 50. The
settlers in this township, being unable to obtain their grants, resolved
to send a remonstrance to the British government, and chose as their
representative one of their number who had known Lord Cornwallis during
the war, hoping through him to obtain redress. This agent was on the
point of leaving for England, when news of his intention reached Colonel
Fanning. The ensuing result was as prompt as it was significant: within a
week afterwards nearly all the Loyalists in Township No. 50 had obtained
their grants.

Others, however, did not have friends in high places, and were unable
to obtain redress. The minutes of council which contained the records
of many of the allotments were not entered in the regular Council Book,
but were kept on loose sheets; and thus the unfortunate settlers were
not able to prove by the Council Book that their lands had been allotted
them. When the rough minutes were discovered years later, they were found
to bear evidence, in erasures and the use of different inks, of having
been tampered with.

For seventy-five years the Loyalists continued to agitate for justice.
As early as 1790 the island legislature passed an act empowering the
governor to give grants to those who had not yet received them from the
proprietors. But this measure did not entirely redress the grievances,
and after a lapse of fifty years a petition of the descendants of the
Loyalists led to further action in the matter. In 1840 a bill was passed
by the House of Assembly granting relief to the Loyalists, but was
thrown out by the Legislative Council. As late as 1860 the question was
still troubling the island politics. In that year a land commission was
appointed, which reported that there were Loyalists who still had claims
on the local government, and recommended that free grants should be made
to such as could prove that their fathers had been attracted to the
island under promises which had never been fulfilled.

Such is the unlovely story of how the Loyalists were persecuted in the
Island of St John, under the British flag.




CHAPTER IX

THE LOYALISTS IN QUEBEC


It was a tribute to the stability of British rule in the newly-won
province of Quebec that at the very beginning of the Revolutionary War
loyal refugees began to flock across the border. As early as June 2,
1774, Colonel Christie, stationed at St Johns on the Richelieu, wrote
to Sir Frederick Haldimand at Quebec notifying him of the arrival of
immigrants; and it is interesting to note that at that early date he
already complained of ‘their unreasonable expectations.’ In the years
1775 and 1776 large bodies of persecuted Loyalists from the Mohawk
valley came north with Sir John Johnson and Colonel Butler; and in these
years was formed in Canada the first of the Loyalist regiments. It was
not, however, until the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1778 that
the full tide of immigration set in. Immediately thereafter Haldimand
wrote to Lord George Germain, under date of October 14, 1778, reporting
the arrival of ‘loyalists in great distress,’ seeking refuge from the
revolted provinces. Haldimand lost no time in making provision for
their reception. He established a settlement for them at Machiche, near
Three Rivers, which he placed under the superintendence of a compatriot
and a protégé of his named Conrad Gugy. The captains of militia in the
neighbourhood were ordered to help build barracks for the refugees,
provisions were secured from the merchants at Three Rivers, and
everything in reason was done to make the unfortunates comfortable. By
the autumn of 1778 there were in Canada, at Machiche and other places,
more than one thousand refugees, men, women, and children, exclusive of
those who had enlisted in the regiments. Including the troops, probably
no less than three thousand had found their way to Canada.

With the conclusion of peace came a great rush to the north. The
resources of government were strained to the utmost to provide for
the necessities of the thousands who flocked over the border-line.
At Chambly, St Johns, Montreal, Sorel, Machiche, Quebec, officers of
government were stationed to dole out supplies. At Quebec alone in
March 1784 one thousand three hundred and thirty-eight ‘friends of
government’ were being fed at the public expense. At Sorel a settlement
was established similar to that at Machiche. The seigneury of Sorel had
been purchased by the government in 1780 for military purposes, and when
the war was over it was turned into a Loyalist reserve, on which huts
were erected and provisions dispensed. In all, there must have been
nearly seven thousand Loyalists in the province of Quebec in the winter
of 1783-84.

Complete details are lacking with regard to the temporary encampments
in which the Loyalists were hived; but there are evidences that they
were not entirely satisfied with the manner in which they were looked
after. One of the earliest of Canadian county histories,[1] a book partly
based on traditionary sources, has some vague tales about the cruelty
and malversation practised by a Frenchman under whom the Loyalists
were placed at ‘Mishish.’ ‘Mishish’ is obviously a phonetic spelling
of Machiche, and ‘the Frenchman’ is probably Conrad Gugy. Some letters
in the Dominion Archives point in the same direction. Under date of
April 29, the governor’s secretary writes to Stephen De Lancey, the
inspector of the Loyalists, referring to ‘the uniform discontent of the
Loyalists at Machiche.’ The discontent, he explains, is excited by a few
ill-disposed persons. ‘The sickness they complain of has been common
throughout the province, and should have lessened rather than increased
the consumption of provisions.’ A Loyalist who writes to the governor,
putting his complaints on paper, is assured that ‘His Excellency is
anxious to do everything in his power for the Loyalists, but if what
he can do does not come up to the expectation of him and those he
represents, His Excellency gives the fullest permission to them to seek
redress in such manner as they shall think best.’

    [1] _Dundas, or a Sketch of Canadian History_, by James Croil,
    Montreal, 1861.

What degree of justice there was in the complaints of the refugees it
is now difficult to determine. No doubt some of them were confirmed
grumblers, and many of them had what Colonel Christie called
‘unreasonable expectations.’ Nothing is more certain than that Sir
Frederick Haldimand spared no effort to accommodate the Loyalists. On the
other hand, it would be rash to assert that in the confusion which then
reigned there were no grievances of which they could justly complain.

In the spring and summer of 1784 the great majority of the refugees
within the limits of the province of Quebec were removed to what was
afterwards known as Upper Canada. But some remained, and swelled the
number of the ‘old subjects’ in the French province. Considerable
settlements were made at two places. One of these was Sorel, where
the seigneury that had been bought by the crown was granted out to
the new-comers in lots; the other was in the Gaspé peninsula, on the
shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence and of Chaleur Bay. The seigneury
of Sorel was well peopled, for each grantee received only sixty acres
and a town lot, taking the rest of his allotment in some of the newer
settlements. The settlement in the Gaspé peninsula was more sparse; the
chief centre of population was the tiny fishing village of Paspebiac.
In addition to these settlements, some of the exiles took up land on
private seigneuries; these, however, were not many, for the government
discouraged the practice, and refused supplies to all who did not settle
on the king’s land. At the present time, of all these Loyalist groups
in the province of Quebec scarce a trace remains: they have all been
swallowed up in the surrounding French population.

The Eastern Townships in the province of Quebec were not settled by the
United Empire Loyalists. In 1783 Sir Frederick Haldimand set his face
like flint against any attempt on the part of the Loyalists to settle
the lands lying along the Vermont frontier. He feared that a settlement
there would prove a permanent thorn in the flesh of the Americans, and
might lead to much trouble and friction. He wished that these lands
should be left unsettled for a time, and that, in the end, they should
be settled by French Canadians ‘as an antidote to the restless New
England population.’ Some of the more daring Loyalists, in spite of the
prohibition of the governor, ventured to settle on Missisquoi Bay. When
the governor heard of it, he sent orders to the officer commanding at
St Johns that they should be removed as soon as the season should admit
of it; and instructions were given that if any other Loyalists settled
there, their houses were to be destroyed. By these drastic means the
government kept the Eastern Townships a wilderness until after 1791,
when the townships were granted out in free and common socage, and
American settlers began to flock in. But, as will be explained, these
later settlers have no just claim to the appellation of United Empire
Loyalists.




CHAPTER X

THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS


Sir Frederick Haldimand offered the Loyalists a wide choice of places
in which to settle. He was willing to make land grants on Chaleur Bay,
at Gaspé, on the north shore of the St Lawrence above Montreal, on the
Bay of Quinté, at Niagara, or along the Detroit river; and if none of
these places was suitable, he offered to transport to Nova Scotia or Cape
Breton those who wished to go thither. At all these places settlements
of Loyalists sprang up. That at Niagara grew to considerable importance,
and became after the division of the province in 1791 the capital of
Upper Canada. But by far the largest settlement was that which Haldimand
planned along the north shore of the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario between
the western boundary of the government of Quebec and Cataraqui (now
Kingston), east of the Bay of Quinté. Here the great majority of the
Loyalists in Canada were concentrated.

As soon as Haldimand received instructions from England with regard
to the granting of the lands he gave orders to Major Samuel Holland,
surveyor-general of the king’s territories in North America, to proceed
with the work of making the necessary surveys. Major Holland, taking with
him as assistants Lieutenants Kotté and Sutherland and deputy-surveyors
John Collins and Patrick McNish, set out in the early autumn of 1783, and
before the winter closed in he had completed the survey of five townships
bordering on the Bay of Quinté. The next spring his men returned, and
surveyed eight townships along the north bank of the St Lawrence, between
the Bay of Quinté and the provincial boundary. These townships are now
distinguished by names, but in 1783-84 they were designated merely
by numbers; thus for many years the old inhabitants referred to the
townships of Osnaburg, Williamsburg, and Matilda, for instance, as the
‘third town,’ the ‘fourth town,’ and the ‘fifth town.’ The surveys were
made in great haste, and, it is to be feared, not with great care; for
some tedious lawsuits arose out of the discrepancies contained in them,
and a generation later Robert Gourlay wrote that ‘one of the present
surveyors informed me that in running new lines over a great extent of
the province, he found spare room for a whole township in the midst of
those laid out at an early period.’ Each township was subdivided into
lots of two hundred acres each, and a town-site was selected in each case
which was subdivided into town lots.

[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK HALDIMAND

After a contemporary painting]

The task of transporting the settlers from their camping-places at Sorel,
Machiche, and St Johns to their new homes up the St Lawrence was one
of some magnitude. General Haldimand was not able himself to oversee
the work; but he appointed Sir John Johnson as superintendent, and the
work of settlement went on under Johnson’s care. On a given day the
Loyalists were ordered to strike camp, and proceed in a body to the new
settlements. Any who remained behind without sufficient excuse had their
rations stopped. Bateaux took the settlers up the St Lawrence, and the
various detachments were disembarked at their respective destinations. It
had been decided that the settlers should be placed on the land as far as
possible according to the corps in which they had served during the war,
and that care should be taken to have the Protestant and Roman Catholic
members of a corps settled separately. It was this arrangement which
brought about the grouping of Protestant and Roman Catholic Scottish
Highlanders in Glengarry. The first battalion of the King’s Royal
Regiment of New York was settled on the first five townships west of the
provincial boundary. This was Sir John Johnson’s regiment, and most of
its members were his Scottish dependants from the Mohawk valley. The next
three townships were settled by part of Jessup’s Corps, an offshoot of
Sir John Johnson’s regiment. Of the Cataraqui townships the first was
settled by a band of New York Loyalists, many of them of Dutch or German
extraction, commanded by Captain Michael Grass. On the second were part
of Jessup’s Corps; on the third and fourth were a detachment of the
second battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, which had been
stationed at Oswego across the lake at the close of the war, a detachment
of Rogers’s Rangers, and a party of New York Loyalists under Major Van
Alstine. The parties commanded by Grass and Van Alstine had come by ship
from New York to Quebec after the evacuation of New York in 1783. On the
fifth township were various detachments of disbanded regular troops, and
even a handful of disbanded German mercenaries.

As soon as the settlers had been placed on the townships to which they
had been assigned, they received their allotments of land. The surveyor
was the land agent, and the allotments were apportioned by each applicant
drawing a lot out of a hat. This democratic method of allotting lands
roused the indignation of some of the officers who had settled with their
men. They felt that they should have been given the front lots, unmindful
of the fact that their grants as officers were from five to ten times as
large as the grants which their men received. Their protests, contained
in a letter of Captain Grass to the governor, roused Haldimand to a
display of warmth to which he was as a rule a stranger. Captain Grass and
his associates, he wrote, were to get no special privileges, ‘the most
of them who came into the province with him being, in fact, mechanics,
only removed from one situation to practise their trade in another. Mr
Grass should, therefore, think himself very well off to draw lots in
common with the Loyalists.’ A good deal of difficulty arose also from the
fact that many allotments were inferior to the rest from an agricultural
point of view; but difficulties of this sort were adjusted by Johnson and
Holland on the spot.

By 1784 nearly all the settlers were destitute and completely dependent
on the generosity of the British government. They had no effects; they
had no money; and in many cases they were sorely in need of clothes. The
way in which Sir Frederick Haldimand came to their relief is deserving
of high praise. If he had adhered to the letter of his instructions from
England, the position of the Loyalists would have been a most unenviable
one. Repeatedly, however, Haldimand took on his own shoulders the
responsibility of ignoring or disobeying the instructions from England,
and trusted to chance that his protests would prevent the government from
repudiating his actions. When the home government, for instance, ordered
a reduction of the rations, Haldimand undertook to continue them in full;
and fortunately for him the home government, on receipt of his protest,
rescinded the order.

The settlers on the Upper St Lawrence and the Bay of Quinté did not
perhaps fare as well as those in Nova Scotia, or even the Mohawk Indians
who settled on the Grand river. They did not receive lumber for building
purposes, and ‘bricks for the inside of their chimneys, and a little
assistance of nails,’ as did the former; nor did they receive ploughs
and church-bells, as did the latter. For building lumber they had to
wait until saw-mills were constructed; instead of ploughs they had at
first to use hoes and spades, and there were not quite enough hoes and
spades to go round. Still, they did not fare badly. When the difficulty
of transporting things up the St Lawrence is remembered, it is remarkable
that they obtained as much as they did. In the first place they were
supplied with clothes for three years, or until they were able to provide
clothes for themselves. These consisted of coarse cloth for trousers
and Indian blankets for coats. Boots they made out of skins or heavy
cloth. Tools for building were given them: to each family were given
an ax and a hand-saw, though unfortunately the axes were short-handled
ship’s axes, ill-adapted to cutting in the forest; to each group of two
families were allotted a whip-saw and a cross-cut saw; and to each group
of five families was supplied a set of tools, containing chisels, augers,
draw-knives, etc. To each group of five families was also allotted ‘one
firelock ... intended for the messes, the pigeon and wildfowl season’;
but later on a firelock was supplied to every head of a family.
Haldimand went to great trouble in obtaining seed-wheat for the settlers,
sending agents down even into Vermont and the Mohawk valley to obtain
all that was to be had; he declined, however, to supply stock for the
farms, and although eventually he obtained some cattle, there were not
nearly enough cows to go round. In many cases the soldiers were allowed
the loan of the military tents; and everything was done to have saw-mills
and grist-mills erected in the most convenient places with the greatest
possible dispatch. In the meantime small portable grist-mills, worked by
hand, were distributed among the settlers.

Among the papers relating to the Loyalists in the Canadian Archives there
is an abstract of the numbers of the settlers in the five townships
at Cataraqui and the eight townships on the St Lawrence. There were
altogether 1568 men, 626 women, 1492 children, and 90 servants, making a
total of 3776 persons. These were, of course, only the original settlers.
As time went on others were added. Many of the soldiers had left their
families in the States behind them, and these families now hastened
to cross the border. A proclamation had been issued by the British
government inviting those Loyalists who still remained in the States to
assemble at certain places along the frontier, namely, at Isle aux Noix,
at Sackett’s Harbour, at Oswego, and at Niagara. The favourite route was
the old trail from the Mohawk valley to Oswego, where was stationed a
detachment of the 34th regiment. From Oswego these refugees crossed to
Cataraqui. ‘Loyalists,’ wrote an officer at Cataraqui in the summer of
1784, ‘are coming in daily across the lake.’ To accommodate these new
settlers three more townships had to be mapped out at the west end of the
Bay of Quinté.

For the first few years the Cataraqui settlers had a severe struggle
for existence. Most of them arrived in 1784, too late to attempt to sow
fall wheat; and it was several seasons before their crops became nearly
adequate for food. The difficulties of transportation up the St Lawrence
rendered the arrival of supplies irregular and uncertain. Cut off as they
were from civilization by the St Lawrence rapids, they were in a much
less advantageous position than the great majority of the Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick settlers, who were situated near the sea-coast. They
had no money, and as the government refused to send them specie, they
were compelled to fall back on barter as a means of trade, with the
result that all trade was local and trivial. In the autumn of 1787 the
crops failed, and in 1788 famine stalked through the land. There are many
legends about what was known as ‘the hungry year.’ If we are to believe
local tradition, some of the settlers actually died of starvation. In the
family papers of one family is to be found a story about an old couple
who were saved from starvation only by the pigeons which they were able
to knock over. A member of another family testifies: ‘We had the luxury
of a cow which the family brought with them, and had it not been for this
domestic boon, all would have perished in the year of scarcity.’ Two
hundred acre lots were sold for a few pounds of flour. A valuable cow, in
one case, was sold for eight bushels of potatoes; a three-year-old horse
was exchanged for half a hundredweight of flour. Bran was used for making
cakes; and leeks, buds of trees, and even leaves, were ground into food.

The summer of 1789, however, brought relief to the settlers, and though,
for many years, comforts and even necessaries were scarce, yet after
1791, the year in which the new settlements were erected into the
province of Upper Canada, it may be said that most of the settlers
had been placed on their feet. The soil was fruitful; communication
and transportation improved; and metallic currency gradually found
its way into the settlements. When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the
lieutenant-governor, passed through the country in 1792, she was struck
by the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers from the
Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the wheat. ‘I observed on my
way thither,’ she says in her diary, ‘that the wheat appeared finer than
any I have seen in England, and totally free from weeds.’ And a few
months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the same way, wrote:
‘In so infant a settlement, it would have been irrational to expect that
abundance which bursts the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more
cultivated countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance which
indicated that with economy and industry, there would be enough.’

Next in size to the settlements at Cataraqui and on the Upper St Lawrence
was the settlement at Niagara. During the war Niagara had been a haven
of refuge for the Loyalists of Pennsylvania and the frontier districts,
just as Oswego and St Johns had been havens of refuge for the Loyalists
of northern and western New York. As early as 1776 there arrived at
Fort George, Niagara, in a starving condition, five women and thirty-six
children, bearing names which are still to be found in the Niagara
peninsula. From that date until the end of the war refugees continued
to come in. Many of these refugees were the families of the men and
officers of the Loyalist troops stationed at Niagara. On September 27,
1783, for instance, the officer commanding at Niagara reports the arrival
from Schenectady of the wives of two officers of Butler’s Rangers,
with a number of children. Some of these people went down the lake to
Montreal; but others remained at the post, and ‘squatted’ on the land.
In 1780 Colonel Butler reports to Haldimand that four or five families
have settled and built houses, and he requests that they be given seed
early in the spring. In 1781 we know that a Loyalist named Robert Land
had squatted on Burlington Bay, at the head of Lake Ontario. In 1783
Lieutenant Tinling was sent to Niagara to survey lots, and Sergeant Brass
of the 84th was sent to build a saw-mill and a grist-mill. At the same
time Butler’s Rangers, who were stationed at the fort, were disbanded;
and a number of them were induced to take up land. They took up land on
the west side of the river, because, although, according to the terms of
peace, Fort George was not given up by the British until 1796, the river
was to constitute the boundary between the two countries. A return of the
rise and progress of the settlement made in May 1784 shows a total of
forty-six settlers (that is, heads of families), with forty-four houses
and twenty barns. The return makes it clear that cultivation had been
going on for some time. There were 713 acres cleared, 123 acres sown in
wheat, and 342 acres waiting to be sown; and the farms were very well
stocked, there being an average of about three horses and four or five
cows to each settler.

With regard to the settlement at Detroit, there is not much evidence
available. It was Haldimand’s intention at first to establish a large
settlement there, but the difficulties of communication doubtless proved
to be insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler’s Rangers
settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied for and received a
grant of land on which he made a settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we
find Captain Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land and
houses they occupied. In 1783 the commanding officer at Detroit reported
the arrival from Red Creek of two men, ‘one a Girty, the other McCarty,’
who had come to see what encouragement there was to settle under the
British government. They asserted that several hundred more would be glad
to come if sufficient inducements were offered them, as they saw before
them where they were nothing but persecution. In 1784 Jehu Hay, the
British lieutenant-governor of Detroit, sent in lists of men living near
Fort Pitt who were anxious to settle under the British government if they
could get lands, most of them being men who had served in the Highland
and 60th regiments. But it is safe to assume that no large number of
these ever settled near Detroit, for when Hay arrived in Detroit in the
summer of 1784, he found only one Loyalist at the post itself. There
had been for more than a generation a settlement of French Canadians at
Detroit; but it was not until after 1791 that the English element became
at all considerable.

It has been estimated that in the country above Montreal in 1783 there
were ten thousand Loyalists, and that by 1791 this number had increased
to twenty-five thousand. These figures are certainly too large.
Pitt’s estimate of the population of Upper Canada in 1791 was only
ten thousand. This is probably much nearer the mark. The overwhelming
majority of these people were of very humble origin. Comparatively few
of the half-pay officers settled above Montreal before 1791; and most
of these were, as Haldimand said, ‘mechanics, only removed from one
situation to practise their trade in another.’ Major Van Alstine, it
appears, was a blacksmith before he came to Canada. That many of the
Loyalists were illiterate is evident from the testimony of the Rev.
William Smart, a Presbyterian clergyman who came to Upper Canada in 1811:
‘There were but few of the U. E. Loyalists who possessed a complete
education. He was personally acquainted with many, especially along the
St Lawrence and Bay of Quinté, and by no means were all educated, or men
of judgment; even the half-pay officers, many of them, had but a limited
education.’ The aristocrats of the ‘Family Compact’ party did not come to
Canada with the Loyalists of 1783; they came, in most cases, after 1791,
some of them from Britain, such as Bishop Strachan, and some of them from
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, such as the Jarvises and the Robinsons.
This fact is one which serves to explain a great deal in Upper Canadian
history.




CHAPTER XI

COMPENSATION AND HONOUR


Throughout the war the British government had constantly granted relief
and compensation to Loyalists who had fled to England. In the autumn
of 1782 the treasury was paying out to them, on account of losses or
services, an annual amount of £40,280 over and above occasional payments
of a particular or extraordinary nature amounting to £17,000 or £18,000
annually. When peace had been concluded, and it became clear that the
Americans had no intention of making restitution to the Loyalists, the
British government determined to put the payments for their compensation
on a more satisfactory basis.

For this purpose the Coalition Government of Fox and North appointed in
July 1783 a royal commission ‘to inquire into the losses and services
of all such persons who have suffered in their rights, properties,
and professions during the late unhappy dissensions in America, in
consequence of their loyalty to His Majesty and attachment to the British
Government.’ A full account of the proceedings of the commission is to
be found in the _Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry into the
Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists_, published in
London in 1815 by one of the commissioners, John Eardley Wilmot. The
commission was originally appointed to sit for only two years; but the
task which confronted it was so great that it was found necessary several
times to renew the act under which it was appointed; and not until
1790 was the long inquiry brought to an end. It was intended at first
that the claims of the men in the Loyalist regiments should be sent in
through their officers; and Sir John Johnson, for instance, was asked to
transmit the claims of the Loyalists settled in Canada. But it was found
that this method did not provide sufficient guarantee against fraudulent
and exorbitant claims; and eventually members of the commission were
compelled to go in person to New York, Nova Scotia, and Canada.

The delay in concluding the work of the commission caused great
indignation. A tract which appeared in London in 1788 entitled
_The Claim of, the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained upon
Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice_ drew a black picture of
the results of the delay:

    It is well known that this delay of justice has produced the
    most melancholy and shocking events. A number of sufferers have
    been driven into insanity and become their own destroyers,
    leaving behind them their helpless widows and orphans to
    subsist upon the cold charity of strangers. Others have been
    sent to cultivate the wilderness for their subsistence,
    without having the means, and compelled through want to throw
    themselves on the mercy of the American States, and the charity
    of former friends, to support the life which might have been
    made comfortable by the money long since due by the British
    Government; and many others with their families are barely
    subsisting upon a temporary allowance from Government, a mere
    pittance when compared with the sum due them.

Complaints were also made about the methods of the inquiry. The claimant
was taken into a room alone with the commissioners, was asked to submit
a written and sworn statement as to his losses and services, and was
then cross-examined both with regard to his own losses and those of his
fellow claimants. This cross-questioning was freely denounced as an
‘inquisition.’

Grave inconvenience was doubtless caused in many cases by the delay of
the commissioners in making their awards. But on the other hand it should
be remembered that the commissioners had before them a portentous task.
They had to examine between four thousand and five thousand claims. In
most of these the amount of detail to be gone through was considerable,
and the danger of fraud was great. There was the difficulty also of
determining just what losses should be compensated. The rule which was
followed was that claims should be allowed only for losses of property
through loyalty, for loss of offices held before the war, and for loss
of actual professional income. No account was taken of lands bought or
improved during the war, of uncultivated lands, of property mortgaged
to its full value or with defective titles, of damage done by British
troops, or of forage taken by them. Losses due to the fall in the value
of the provincial paper money were thrown out, as were also expenses
incurred while in prison or while living in New York city. Even losses
in trade and labour were discarded. It will be seen that to apply these
rules to thousands of detailed claims, all of which had to be verified,
was not the work of a few days, or even months.

It must be remembered, too, that during the years from 1783 to 1790 the
British government was doing a great deal for the Loyalists in other
ways. Many of the better class received offices under the crown. Sir John
Johnson was appointed superintendent of the Loyalists in Canada, and
then superintendent of Indian Affairs; Colonel Edmund Fanning was made
lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia; Ward Chipman became solicitor-general
of New Brunswick. The officers of the Loyalist regiments were put on
half-pay; and there is evidence that many were allowed thus to rank as
half-pay officers who had no real claim to the title. ‘Many,’ said the
Rev. William Smart of Brockville, ‘were placed on the list of officers,
not because they had seen service, but as the most certain way of
compensating them for losses sustained in the Rebellion’; and Haldimand
himself complained that ‘there is no end to it if every man that comes
in is to be considered and paid as an officer.’ Then every Loyalist who
wished to do so received a grant of land. The rule was that each field
officer should receive 5000 acres, each captain 3000, each subaltern
2000, and each non-commissioned officer and private 200 acres. This rule
was not uniformly observed, and there was great irregularity in the
size of the grants. Major Van Alstine, for instance, received only 1200
acres. But in what was afterwards Upper Canada, 3,200,000 acres were
granted out to Loyalists before 1787. And in addition to all this, the
British government clothed and fed and housed the Loyalists until they
were able to provide for themselves. There were those in Nova Scotia
who were receiving rations as late as 1792. What all this must have
cost the government during the years following 1783 it is difficult to
compute. Including the cost of surveys, official salaries, the building
of saw-mills and grist-mills, and such things, the figures must have run
up to several millions of pounds.

When it is remembered that all this had been already done, it will be
admitted to be a proof of the generosity of the British government that
the total of the claims allowed by the royal commission amounted to
£3,112,455. The grants varied in size from £10, the compensation paid
to a common soldier, to £44,500, the amount paid to Sir John Johnson.
The total outlay on the part of Great Britain, both during and after the
war, on account of the Loyalists, must have amounted to not less than
£6,000,000, exclusive of the value of the lands assigned.

With the object possibly of assuaging the grievances of which the
Loyalists complained in connection with the proceedings of the royal
commission, Lord Dorchester (as Sir Guy Carleton was by that time
styled) proposed in 1789 ‘to put a Marke of Honor upon the families who
had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard
in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.’ It was
therefore resolved that all Loyalists of that description were ‘to be
distinguished by the letters U.E. affixed to their names, alluding to
their great principle, the unity of the empire.’ The land boards were
ordered to preserve a registry of all such persons, ‘to the end that
their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers,’ and that
their sons and daughters, on coming of age, might receive grants of
two hundred acre lots. Unfortunately, the land boards carried out
these instructions in a very half-hearted manner, and when Colonel John
Graves Simcoe became lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, he found the
regulation a dead letter. He therefore revived it in a proclamation
issued at York (now Toronto), on April 6, 1796, which directed the
magistrates to ascertain under oath and to register the names of all
those who by reason of their loyalty to the Empire were entitled to
special distinction and grants of land. A list was compiled from the land
board registers, from the provision lists and muster lists, and from the
registrations made upon oath, which was known as the ‘Old U. E. List’;
and it is a fact often forgotten that no one, the names of some of whose
ancestors are not inscribed in that list, has the right to describe
himself as a United Empire Loyalist.




CHAPTER XII

THE AMERICAN MIGRATION


From the first the problem of governing the settlements above Montreal
perplexed the authorities. It was very early proposed to erect them into
a separate province, as New Brunswick had been erected into a separate
province. But Lord Dorchester was opposed to any such arrangement. ‘It
appears to me,’ he wrote to Lord Sydney, ‘that the western settlements
are as yet unprepared for any organization superior to that of a county.’
In 1787, therefore, the country west of Montreal was divided into four
districts, for a time named Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau, and Hesse.
Lunenburg stretched from the western boundary of the province of Quebec
to the Gananoqui; Mecklenburg, from the Gananoqui to the Trent, flowing
into the Bay of Quinté; Nassau, from the Trent to a line drawn due north
from Long Point on Lake Erie; and Hesse, from this line to Detroit. We
do not know who was responsible for inflicting these names on a new
and unoffending country. Perhaps they were thought a compliment to the
Hanoverian ruler of England. Fortunately they were soon dropped, and the
names Eastern, Midland, Home, and Western were substituted.

This division of the settlements proved only temporary. It left the
Loyalists under the arbitrary system of government set up in Quebec
by the Quebec Act of 1774, under which they enjoyed no representative
institutions whatever. It was not long before petitions began to pour in
from them asking that they should be granted a representative assembly.
Undoubtedly Lord Dorchester had underestimated the desire among them for
representative institutions. In 1791, therefore, the country west of the
Ottawa river, with the exception of a triangle of land at the junction
of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence, was erected by the Constitutional
Act into a separate province, with the name of Upper Canada; and this
province was granted a representative assembly of fifteen members.

The lieutenant-governor appointed for the new province was Colonel John
Graves Simcoe. During the war Colonel Simcoe had been the commanding
officer of the Queen’s Rangers, which had been largely composed of
Loyalists, and he was therefore not unfitted to govern the new province.
He was theoretically under the control of Lord Dorchester at Quebec; but
his relations with Dorchester were somewhat strained, and he succeeded
in making himself virtually independent in his western jurisdiction.
Though he seemed phlegmatic, he possessed a vigorous and enterprising
disposition, and he planned great things for Upper Canada. He explored
the country in search of the best site for a capital; and it is
interesting to know that he had such faith in the future of Upper Canada
that he actually contemplated placing the capital in what was then the
virgin wilderness about the river Thames. He inaugurated a policy of
building roads and improving communications which showed great foresight;
and he entered upon an immigration propaganda, by means of proclamations
advertising free land grants, which brought a great increase of
population to the province.

[Illustration: JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE

From the bust in Exeter Cathedral]

Simcoe believed that there were still in the United States after 1791
many people who had remained loyal at heart to Great Britain, and who
were profoundly dissatisfied with their lot under the new American
government. It was his object to attract these people to Upper Canada
by means of his proclamations; and there is no doubt that he was partly
successful. But he also attracted many who had no other motive in coming
to Canada than their desire to obtain free land grants, and whose
attachment to the British crown was of the most recent origin. These
people were freely branded by the original settlers as ‘Americans’;
and there is no doubt that in many cases the name expressed their real
sympathies.

The War of the Revolution had hardly been brought to a conclusion when
some of the Americans showed a tendency to migrate into Canada. In 1783,
when the American Colonel Willet was attempting an attack on the British
garrison at Oswego, American traders, with an impudence which was superb,
were arriving at Niagara. In 1784 some rebels who had attempted to pose
as Loyalists were ejected from the settlements at Cataraqui. And after
Simcoe began to advertise free land grants to all who would take the
oath of allegiance to King George, hundreds of Americans flocked across
the border. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld, a French _émigré_ who travelled
through Upper Canada in 1795, and who has given us the best account of
the province at that time, asserted that there were in Upper Canada many
who ‘falsely profess an attachment to the British monarch and curse the
Government of the Union for the mere purpose of getting possession of
the lands.’ ‘We met in this excursion,’ says La Rochefoucauld in another
place, ‘an American family who, with some oxen, cows, and sheep, were
emigrating to Canada. “We come,” said they, “to the governor,” whom they
did not know, “to see whether he will give us land.” “Aye, aye,” the
governor replied, “you are tired of the federal government; you like not
any longer to have so many kings; you wish again for your old father”
(it is thus the governor calls the British monarch when he speaks with
Americans); “you are perfectly right; come along, we love such good
Royalists as you are; we will give you land.”’

Other testimony is not lacking. Writing in 1799 Richard Cartwright said,
‘It has so happened that a great portion of the population of that part
of the province which extends from the head of the Bay of Kenty upwards
is composed of persons who have evidently no claim to the appellation of
Loyalists.’ In some districts it was a cause of grievance that persons
from the States entered the province, petitioned for lands, took the
necessary oaths, and, having obtained possession of the land, resold
it, pocketed the money, and returned to build up the American Union. As
late as 1816 a letter appeared in the Kingston _Gazette_ in which the
complaint is made that ‘people who have come into the country from the
States, marry into a family, and obtain a lot of wild land, get John
Ryder to move the landmarks, and instead of a wild lot, take by force a
fine house and barn and orchard, and a well-cultivated farm, and turn the
old Tory (as he is called) out of his house, and all his labor for thirty
years.’

Never at any other time perhaps have conditions been so favourable in
Canada for land-grabbing and land-speculation as they were then. Owing to
the large amount of land granted to absentee owners, and to the policy
of free land grants announced by Simcoe, land was sold at a very low
price. In some cases two hundred acre lots were sold for a gallon of rum.
In 1791 Sir William Pullency, an English speculator, bought 1,500,000
acres of land in Upper Canada at one shilling an acre, and sold 700,000
acres later for an average of eight shillings an acre. Under these
circumstances it was not surprising that many Americans, with their
shrewd business instincts, flocked into the country.

It is clear, then, that a large part of the immigration which took place
under Simcoe was not Loyalist in its character. From this, it must not
be understood that the new-comers were not good settlers. Even Richard
Cartwright confessed that they had ‘resources in themselves which other
people are usually strangers to.’ They compared very favourably with the
Loyalists who came from England and the Maritime Provinces, who were
described by Cartwright as ‘idle and profligate.’ The great majority
of the American settlers became loyal subjects of the British crown;
and it was only when the American army invaded Canada in 1812, and when
William Lyon Mackenzie made a push for independence in 1837, that the
non-Loyalist character of some of the early immigration became apparent.




CHAPTER XIII

The Loyalist in his New Home


The social history of the United Empire Loyalists was not greatly
different from that of other pioneer settlers in the Canadian forest.
Their homes were such as could have been seen until recently in many of
the outlying parts of the country. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick some
of the better class of settlers were able to put up large and comfortable
wooden houses, some of which are still standing. But even there most of
them had to be content with primitive quarters. Edward Winslow was not a
poor man, as poverty was reckoned in those days. Yet he lived in rather
meagre style. He described his house at Granville, opposite Annapolis, as
being ‘almost as large as my log house, divided into two rooms, where we
are snug as pokers.’ Two years later, after he had made additions to it,
he proposed advertising it for sale in the following terms: ‘That elegant
House now occupied by the Honourable E. W., one of His Majesty’s Council
for the Province of New Brunswick, consisting of four beautiful Rooms on
the first Floor, highly finished. Also two spacious-lodging chambers in
the second story—a capacious dry cellar with arches &c. &c. &c.’ In Upper
Canada, owing to the difficulty of obtaining building materials, the
houses of the half-pay officers were even less pretentious. A traveller
passing through the country about Johnstown in 1792 described Sir John
Johnson’s house as ‘a small country lodge, neat, but as the grounds are
only beginning to be cleared, there was nothing of interest.’

The home of the average Loyalist was a log-cabin. Sometimes the cabin
contained one room, sometimes two. Its dimensions were as a rule no
more than fourteen feet by eighteen feet, and sometimes ten by fifteen.
The roofs were constructed of bark or small hollowed basswood logs,
overlapping one another like tiles. The windows were as often as not
covered not with glass, but with oiled paper. The chimneys were built
of sticks and clay, or rough unmortared stones, since bricks were not
procurable; sometimes there was no chimney, and the smoke was allowed
to find its way out through a hole in the bark roof. Where it was
impossible to obtain lumber, the doors were made of pieces of timber
split into rough boards; and in some cases the hinges and latches were
made of wood. These old log cabins, with the chinks between the logs
filled in with clay and moss, were still to be seen standing in many
parts of the country as late as fifty years ago. Though primitive, they
seem to have been not uncomfortable; and many of the old settlers clung
to them long after they could have afforded to build better. This was
doubtless partly due to the fact that log-houses were exempt from the
taxation laid on frame, brick, and stone structures.

A few of the Loyalists succeeded in bringing with them to Canada some
sticks of furniture or some family heirlooms. Here and there a family
would possess an ancient spindle, a pair of curiously-wrought fire-dogs,
or a quaint pair of hand-bellows. But these relics of a former life
merely served to accentuate the rudeness of the greater part of the
furniture of the settlers. Chairs, benches, tables, beds, chests, were
fashioned by hand from the rough wood. The descendant of one family has
described how the family dinner-table was a large stump, hewn flat on
top, standing in the middle of the floor. The cooking was done at the
open fireplace; it was not until well on in the nineteenth century that
stoves came into common use in Canada.

The clothing of the settlers was of the most varied description. Here
and there was one who had brought with him the tight knee-breeches and
silver-buckled shoes of polite society. But many had arrived with only
what was on their backs; and these soon found their garments, no matter
how carefully darned and patched, succumb to the effects of time and
labour. It was not long before the settlers learnt from the Indians the
art of making clothing out of deer-skin. Trousers made of this material
were found both comfortable and durable. ‘A gentleman who recently died
in Sophiasburg at an advanced age, remembered to have worn a pair for
twelve years, being repaired occasionally, and at the end they were
sold for two dollars and a half.’ Petticoats for women were also made
of deer-skin. ‘My grandmother,’ says one descendant, ‘made all sorts
of useful dresses with these skins, which were most comfortable for a
country life, and for going through the bush [since they] could not be
torn by the branches.’ There were, of course, some articles of clothing
which could not readily be made of leather; and very early the settlers
commenced growing flax and raising sheep for their wool. Home-made linen
and clothing of linsey-woolsey were used in the settlements by high and
low alike. It was not until the close of the eighteenth century that
articles of apparel, other than those made at home of flax and wool,
were easily obtainable. A calico dress was a great luxury. Few daughters
expected to have one until it was bought for their wedding-dress. Great
efforts were always made to array the bride in fitting costume; and
sometimes a dress, worn by the mother in other days, amid other scenes,
was brought forth, yellow and discoloured with the lapse of time.

There was little money in the settlements. What little there was came in
pay to the soldiers or the half-pay officers. Among the greater part of
the population, business was carried on by barter. In Upper Canada the
lack of specie was partly overcome by the use of a kind of paper money.
‘This money consists of small squares of card or paper, on which are
printed promissory notes for various sums. These notes are made payable
once a year, generally about the latter end of September at Montreal.
The name of the merchant or firm is subscribed.’ This was merely an
extension of the system of credit still in use with country merchants,
but it provided the settlers with a very convenient substitute for cash.
The merchants did not suffer, as frequently this paper money was lost,
and never presented; and cases were known of its use by Indians as
wadding for their flint-locks.

Social instincts among the settlers were strongly marked. Whenever a
family was erecting a house or barn, the neighbours as a rule lent a
helping hand. While the men were raising barn-timbers and roof-trees,
the women gathered about the quilting-frames or the spinning-wheels.
After the work was done, it was usual to have a festival. The young men
wrestled and showed their prowess at trials of strength; the rest looked
on and applauded. In the evening there was a dance, at which the local
musician scraped out tuneless tunes on an ancient fiddle; and there was
of course hearty eating and, it is to be feared, heavy drinking.

Schools and churches were few and far between. A number of Loyalist
clergy settled both in Nova Scotia and in Upper Canada, and these held
services and taught school in the chief centres of population. The Rev.
John Stuart was, for instance, appointed chaplain in 1784 at Cataraqui;
and in 1786 he opened an academy there, for which he received government
aid. In time other schools sprang up, taught by retired soldiers or
farmers who were incapacitated for other work. The tuition given in these
schools was of the most elementary sort. La Rochefoucauld, writing of
Cataraqui in 1795, says: ‘In this district are some schools, but they
are few in number. The children are instructed in reading and writing,
and pay each a dollar a month. One of the masters, superior to the
rest in point of knowledge, taught Latin; but he has left the school,
without being succeeded by another instructor of the same learning.’ ‘At
seven years of age,’ writes the son of a Loyalist family, ‘I was one of
those who patronized Mrs Cranahan, who opened a Sylvan Seminary for the
young idea in Adolphustown; from thence, I went to Jonathan Clark’s,
and then tried Thomas Morden, lastly William Faulkiner, a relative of
the Hagermans. You may suppose that these graduations to Parnassus was
[_sic_] carried into effect, because a large amount of knowledge could
be obtained. Not so; for Dilworth’s Spelling Book, and the New Testament,
were the only books possessed by these academies.’

The lack of a clergy was even more marked. When Bishop Mountain visited
Upper Canada in 1794, he found only one Lutheran chapel and two
Presbyterian churches between Montreal and Kingston. At Kingston he
found ‘a small but decent church,’ and about the Bay of Quinté there
were three or four log huts which were used by the Church of England
missionary in the neighbourhood. At Niagara there was a clergyman, but
no church; the services were held in the Freemasons’ Hall. This lack of
a regularly-ordained clergy was partly remedied by a number of itinerant
Methodist preachers or ‘exhorters.’ These men were described by Bishop
Mountain as ‘a set of ignorant enthusiasts, whose preaching is calculated
only to perplex the understanding, to corrupt the morals, to relax the
nerves of industry, and dissolve the bands of society.’ But they gained
a very strong hold on the Loyalist population; and for a long time they
were familiar figures upon the country roads.

For many years communications both in New Brunswick and in Upper Canada
were mainly by water. The roads between the settlements were little more
than forest paths. When Colonel Simcoe went to Upper Canada he planned
to build a road running across the province from Montreal to the river
Thames, to be called Dundas Street. He was recalled, however, before
the road was completed; and the project was allowed to fall through. In
1793 an act was passed by the legislature of Upper Canada ‘to regulate
the laying out, amending, and keeping in repair, the public highways and
roads.’ This threw on the individual settler the obligation of keeping
the road across his lot in good repair; but the large amount of crown
lands and clergy reserves and land held by speculators throughout the
province made this act of little avail. It was not until 1798 that a
road was run from the Bay of Quinté to the head of Lake Ontario, by an
American surveyor named Asa Danforth. But even this government road was
at times impassable; and there is evidence that some travellers preferred
to follow the shore of the lake.

It will be seen from these notes on social history that the Loyalists had
no primrose path. But after the first grumblings and discontents, poured
into the ears of Governor Haldimand and Governor Parr, they seem to have
settled down contentedly to their lot; and their life appears to have
been on the whole happy. Especially in the winter, when they had some
leisure, they seem to have known how to enjoy themselves.

    In the winter season, nothing is more ardently wished for,
    by young persons of both sexes, in Upper Canada, than the
    setting in of frost, accompanied by a fall of snow. Then it
    is, that pleasure commences her reign. The sleighs are drawn
    out. Visits are paid, and returned, in all directions. Neither
    cold, distance, or badness of roads prove any impediment. The
    sleighs glide over all obstacles. It would excite surprise in
    a stranger to view the open before the Governor’s House on a
    levee morning, filled with these carriages. A sleigh would
    not probably make any great figure in Bond street, whose
    silken sons and daughters would probably mistake it for a
    turnip cart, but in the Canadas, it is the means of pleasure,
    and glowing healthful exercise. An overturn is nothing. It
    contributes subject matter for conversation at the next house
    that is visited, when a pleasant raillery often arises on the
    derangement of dress, which the ladies have sustained, and
    the more than usual display of graces, which the tumble has
    occasioned.

This picture, drawn in 1793 by a nameless traveller, is an evidence of
the courage and buoyancy of heart with which the United Empire Loyalists
faced the toils and privations of life in their new home.

    Not drooping like poor fugitives they came
    In exodus to our Canadian wilds,
    But full of heart and hope, with heads erect
    And fearless eyes victorious in defeat.




BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


It is astonishing how little documentary evidence the Loyalists left
behind them with regard to their migration. Among those who fled to
England there were a few who kept diaries and journals, or wrote
memoirs, which have found their way into print; and some contemporary
records have been published with regard to the settlements of Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick. But of the Loyalists who settled in Upper and
Lower Canada there is hardly one who left behind him a written account
of his experiences. The reason for this is that many of them were
illiterate, and those who were literate were so occupied with carving
a home for themselves out of the wilderness that they had neither
time nor inclination for literary labours. Were it not for the state
papers preserved in England, and for a collection of papers made by Sir
Frederick Haldimand, the Swiss soldier of fortune who was governor of
Quebec at the time of the migration, and who had a passion for filing
documents away, our knowledge of the settlements in the Canadas would be
of the most sketchy character.

It would serve no good purpose to attempt here an exhaustive account of
the printed sources relating to the United Empire Loyalists. All that
can be done is to indicate some of the more important. The only general
history of the Loyalists is Egerton Ryerson, _The Loyalists of America
and Their Times_ (2 vols., 1880); it is diffuse and antiquated, and is
written in a spirit of undiscriminating admiration of the Loyalists, but
it contains much good material. Lorenzo Sabine, _Biographical Sketches of
Loyalists of the American Revolution_ (2 vols., 1864), is an old book,
but it is a storehouse of information about individual Loyalists, and
it contains a suggestive introductory essay. Some admirable work on the
Loyalists has been done by recent American historians. Claude H. Van
Tyne, _The Loyalists in the American Revolution_ (1902), is a readable
and scholarly study, based on extensive researches into documentary and
newspaper sources. The Loyalist point of view will be found admirably set
forth in M. C. Tyler, _The Literary History of the American Revolution_
(2 vols., 1897), and _The Party of the Loyalists in the American
Revolution_ (American Historical Review, I, 24). Of special studies in a
limited field the most valuable and important is A. C. Flick, _Loyalism
in New York_ (1901); it is the result of exhaustive researches, and
contains an excellent bibliography of printed and manuscript sources.
Other studies in a limited field are James H. Stark, _The Loyalists of
Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution_ (1910), and
G. A. Gilbert, _The Connecticut Loyalists_ (American Historical Review,
IV, 273).

For the settlements of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the most important
source is _The Winslow Papers_ (edited by W. O. Raymond, 1901), an
admirably annotated collection of private letters written by and to
Colonel Edward Winslow. Some of the official correspondence relating to
the migration is calendared in the Historical Manuscript Commission’s
_Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great
Britain_ (1909). Much material will be found in the provincial histories
of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, such as Beamish Murdoch, _A History of
Nova Scotia or Acadie_ (3 vols., 1867), and James Hannay, _History of New
Brunswick_ (2 vols., 1909), and also in the local and county histories.
The story of the Loyalists of Prince Edward Island is contained in W.
H. Siebert and Florence E. Gilliam, _The Loyalists in Prince Edward
Island_ (Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd
series, IV, ii, 109). An account of the Shelburne colony will be found in
T. Watson Smith, _The Loyalists at Shelburne_ (Collections of the Nova
Scotia Historical Society, VI, 53).

For the settlements in Upper and Lower Canada, the most important source
is the Haldimand Papers, which are fully calendared in the Reports of
the Canadian Archives from 1884 to 1889. J. McIlwraith, _Sir Frederick
Haldimand_ (1904), contains a chapter on ‘The Loyalists’ which is based
upon these papers. The most important secondary source is William
Canniff, _History of the Settlement of Upper Canada_ (1869), a book
the value of which is seriously diminished by lack of reference to
authorities, and by a slipshod style, but which contains a vast amount
of material preserved nowhere else. Among local histories reference may
be made to C. M. Day, _Pioneers of the Eastern Townships_ (1863), James
Croil, _Dundas_ (1861), and J. F. Pringle, _Lunenburgh or the Old Eastern
District_ (1891). An interesting essay in local history is L. H. Tasker,
_The United Empire Loyalist Settlement at Long Point, Lake Erie_ (Ontario
Historical Society, Papers and Records, II). For the later immigration
reference should be made to D. C. Scott, _John Graves Simcoe_ (1905), and
Ernest Cruikshank, _Immigration from the United States Into Upper Canada,
1784-1812_ (Proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Convention of the Ontario
Educational Association, 263).

An authoritative account of the proceedings of the commissioners
appointed to inquire into the losses of the Loyalists is to be found in
J. E. Wilmot, _Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry Into the
Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists_ (1815).

For the social history of the Loyalist settlements a useful book
is A ‘Canuck’ (M. G. Scherk), _Pen Pictures of Early Pioneer Life
in Upper Canada_ (1905). Many interesting notes on social history
will be found also in accounts of travels such as the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels through the United States of North
America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada_ (1799), _The
Diary of Mrs John Graves Simcoe_ (edited by J. Ross Robertson, 1911), and
_Canadian Letters: Description of a Tour thro’ the Provinces of Lower
and Upper Canada in the Course of the Years 1792 and ’93_ (The Canadian
Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, IX, 3 and 4).

An excellent index to unprinted materials relating to the Loyalists is
Wilfred Campbell, _Report on Manuscript Lists Relating to the United
Empire Loyalists, with Reference to Other Sources_ (1909).

See also in this Series: _The Father of British Canada; The War Chief of
the Six Nations_.




INDEX


  Adams, John, a social comparison, 16;
    on strength of Loyalists, 17-18;
    favours compensating the Loyalists, 46.

  Allen, Lieut.-Col. Isaac, on New Brunswick, 72.

  American Revolution, Lecky on, 2;
    merely a phase of English party politics, 7;
    not a war of social classes, 16;
    one-third of the people opposed to measures of, 18;
    ‘fratricidal butchery’ in, 38;
    end of, 45.

  Americans, barbarity of, 40;
    have proof that Loyalists lifted scalps, 42-3;
    hypocrisy of, 48;
    migrate to Upper Canada, 123;
    testimonies against, 124-5;
    and in favour, 126.

  Aplin, Joseph, and the Loyalist settlement at Parrtown, 74.


  Bailey, Rev. Jacob, on the Loyalists, 56.

  Beecher, Rev. Jonathan, and the Shelburne settlement, 66.

  Bliss, Jonathan, a Loyalist in New Brunswick, 80;
    and social feeling in St John, 82-3.

  Blowers, Sampson Salter, and the Loyalists, 56.

  Boston, riots in, 21;
    and migration of the Loyalists, 54.

  Botsford, Amos, 56;
    on New Brunswick, 72.

  Boucher, Rev. Jonathan, advocates doctrines of passive obedience to
        authority and the divine right of kings, 8-10;
    but upholds right of petition, 10;
    and Washington, 13;
    threatened by revolutionary mob, 22-3.

  Brant, Joseph, loyalty of, 37;
    fails to control Indians at Cherry Valley, 40.

  Bunker’s Hill, British obstinacy at, 33.

  Burgoyne, General, and the Loyalists, 33, 38.

  Butler, Colonel John, and his Whig cousins, 16;
    incursions into United States, 34, 39;
    reprimanded, 42;
    and Indian barbarity, 43.

  Byles, Rev. Mather, and the Revolution, 30.


  Campbell, Thomas, his lines on Wyoming valley raid, 30.

  Cape Breton, Loyalists in, 63.

  Carleton, Sir Guy.
    See Dorchester, Lord.

  Carleton, Colonel Thomas, governor of New Brunswick, 79, 81.

  Cartwright, Richard, on the Americans in Upper Canada, 124, 126.

  Cataraqui, hard times of Loyalists at, 105-6.

  Chipman, Ward, a Loyalist in New Brunswick, 80;
    and social feeling in St John, 82-3.

  Constitutional Act of 1791, necessitated by the coming of the
        Loyalists, 6.

  Cooper, Dr Myles, endorses the principle of submission to authority,
        but upholds right of petition, 10.

  Cornwallis, General, and the Loyalists, 45.

  Cowper, William, his lines on American revolutionists, 20.

  Cummings, Samuel, 56;
    on New Brunswick, 72.

  Cuyler, Abraham, leads a Loyalist migration, 63.


  Declaration of Independence, rouses the Loyalists, 13-14.

  De Lancey, Colonel, on Loyalist settlement in New Brunswick, 75.

  Detroit, Loyalist settlement at, 109-10.

  Dole, James, a Loyalist agent, 65.

  Dorchester, Lord, on Canada, 4;
    denounces American Whigs, 50, 51;
    assists migration of the Loyalists, 56, 57;
    takes strong stand in New York, 59-60;
    initiates ‘Marke of Honor,’ 118;
    opposes creation of Upper Canada, 120-2.

  Dulany, Daniel, protests against British policy, 11-12.

  Dundas, Colonel Thomas, on the Loyalist settlement in New Brunswick,
        84-5.


  Eastern Townships, Loyalists not allowed to settle in, 95-6.


  Fanning, Colonel Edmund, tries to take advantage of Loyalists in
        Prince Edward Island, 88.

  Finucane, Chief Justice, fails to appease Loyalists in New Brunswick,
        77.

  Franklin, Benjamin, scouts idea of American independence, 13;
    and his son, 16;
    against granting amnesty to Loyalists, 46.


  Galloway, Joseph, disapproves of British policy, 11;
    a social comparison, 16.

  Georgia, strength of Loyalists in, 18.

  Germain, Lord George, incapacity of, 34.

  Gourlay, Robert, on the survey of townships in Upper Canada, 98.

  Grass, Captain Michael, 100;
    rouses Haldimand’s anger, 101.

  Great Britain, in the Peace of Versailles, 46-7;
    her betrayal of the Loyalists, 48-9;
    makes amends, 52;
    her generosity to Loyalists, 112-18.

  Gugy, Conrad, and Loyalist refugees, 92;
    accusation against, 93.


  Haldimand, Sir Frederick, denounces indiscriminate vengeance, 42;
    settles Loyalist refugees, 91-2, 97-9, 101, 102;
    debars settling in Eastern Townships, 96;
    on compensation to Loyalists, 116-17.

  Haliburton, T. C, on the Shelburne settlement, 69-70.

  Hauser, Frederick, 56;
    on New Brunswick, 72.

  Holland, Major Samuel, surveys townships in Upper Canada, 98.

  Howe, General, and migration of the Loyalists, 54-5.

  Hutchinson, Thomas, disapproves of British policy, 11;
    a comparison, 16;
    persecution of, 21.


  Indians in the American Revolution, barbarity of, 40;
    their use deprecated, 41-2.


  Jessup’s Corps, at Saratoga, 38;
    settlement of, 100.

  Johnson, Sir William, 16;
    his career, 35-6.

  Johnson, Sir John, escapes to Canada, 25;
    incursions into United States, 34, 40-1;
    raises ‘Royal Greens,’ 37;
    charges of barbarity, 41;
    supervises settlement of Loyalists, 99;
    and Loyalist claims, 113;
    superintendent of Indian Affairs, 116;
    compensation paid to, 118;
    his house, 128.

  Johnson, Lady, carried off a prisoner, 25.

  Johnson, Colonel Guy, raises Loyalist regiment, 37.


  King’s American Dragoons, hard lot of, in New Brunswick, 75-6, 77.


  Loughborough, Lord, on Britain’s desertion of the Loyalists, 48.

  Lower Canada, the Loyalists the indirect cause of an assembly being
        granted to, 6.

  Loyalists, the, vilified by early writers, 1-2;
    reparation made, 2;
    honoured in Canada, 3;
    effect of their exodus on United States, 4;
    effect of their migration on Canadian history, 4-6;
    subscribe to the principles of passive submission to authority and
        the right of petition, 8-10;
    disapprove of British policy, 11-12;
    causes of increase in numbers, 12-14;
    loyal toast, 14;
    numbers and strength, 16-19;
    persecution of, 20-31;
    and the test laws, 26-8;
    story of two Loyalists hanged in Philadelphia, 28;
    some penalties, 29;
    confiscation of property, 29-30;
    lack initiative, 32;
    success in battle, 33-4;
    charges of barbarism against, 34-5;
    charges refuted, 41-4;
    some regiments of, 36-8, 73;
    raids and incursions, 38-41;
    their hopeless position at end of war, 45-52;
    British betrayal of, 48-9;
    Britain makes amends, 52;
    migration to Nova Scotia, 53-61;
    some statistics of Loyalists in Maritime Provinces, 63, 66, 68, 73;
    the Shelburne settlement, 63-70;
    migration to New Brunswick, 71-85;
    Prince Edward Island, 86-90;
    Quebec, 91-6;
    Upper Canada, 97-111;
    allowances to, 102-4;
    compensation to, 112-16;
    honours and grants to, 116-18;
    their ‘Marke of Honor,’ 118-19;
    their houses and furniture, 127-9;
    clothing, 130-1;
    means of exchange, 131-2;
    social customs, 132;
    schools and churches, 132-4;
    their happy lot, 136-7.

  Loyalist regiments, settled in New Brunswick, 73;
    their distress, 75-6;
    when formed in Canada, 91;
    settlement of, in Upper Canada, 34, 37, 38, 99-100.

  Loyal Rangers, 38;
    at Wyoming valley, 39;
    at Mohawk valley, 41.


  Macdonell, Alexander, in ‘the ’45,’ 36;
    his ideas of border warfare, 39;
    barbarity of, 42.

  Machiche, Loyalist discontent at, 93-4.

  McKean, Thomas, on number of Loyalists, 18-19.

  Maclean, Colonel Allan, raises a Loyalist regiment, 37.

  Massachusetts, Loyalist migration from, 65-7.

  Mountain, Bishop, on religion in Upper Canada, 134.

  Montgomery, General Richard, in the American Revolution, 7.

  Mowat, Captain, and the Shelburne settlement, 67.


  New Brunswick, candid view of Loyalist in, 14;
    Governor Parr’s opinion of, 71;
    Loyalist settlements in, 72-7;
    erected into a province, 78-9;
    Loyalists fill chief offices in, 80;
    capital of, and election of representatives, 81-3;
    means of communication in, 134-5.

  Newton, William, amusing case of, 84.

  New York, strength of Loyalists in, 17;
    riots in, 22;
    a strange order, 23;
    and the test laws, 27;
    and confiscation of Loyalist property, 30;
    debts due to Loyalists cancelled, 46;
    laws enacted against Loyalists, 51;
    Sir Guy Carleton too much for congress of, 60.

  Niagara, Loyalist settlement at, 107-9.

  North, Lord, denounces Britain’s desertion of Loyalists, 48.

  Nova Scotia, migration of Loyalists to, 53-61;
    uncomplimentary opinions of, 61-2, 64;
    schools and churches in, 132-4.


  Odell, Rev. Jonathan, a Loyalist, 80.

  Oliver, Andrew, persecution of, 21.

  Ontario. See Upper Canada.


  Parr, John, governor of Nova Scotia, on the condition of Loyalist
        refugees, 58-9;
    and the Shelburne settlement, 65, 67-8;
    on New Brunswick, 71;
    and land grants in New Brunswick, 77, 79;
    on social status of Loyalists in Nova Scotia, 83.

  Pennsylvania, strength of Loyalists in, 17;
    and the test laws, 27.

  Prince Edward Island, Loyalists in, 63;
    scurvy treatment, 86-90.

  Pullency, Sir William, and land speculation, 125.

  Pynchon, Joseph, and the Shelburne settlement, 65-6.


  Quebec, Loyalist refugees flock to, 91;
    settlements, 92-5;
    all traces of lost, 95.


  ‘Rivington’s Gazette’ on terms of peace, 49.

  Rochefoucauld, Duc de la, and the Americans in Upper Canada, 123-4;
    on education at Cataraqui, 133.

  Rogers’s Rangers, settlement of, 100.

  ‘Royal Greens,’ or the King’s Royal Regiment, raised, 37;
    at ambuscade of Oriskany, 38;
    settlement of, 100.

  Royal Highland Emigrants, 37.


  St John, social bitterness among Loyalists in, 82.

  Scottish Highlanders, rebels of ‘the ’45,’ become Loyalists, 36.

  Seabury, Dr, and the Loyalists, 56.

  Shelburne, story of the Loyalist settlement at, 63-70.

  Simcoe, Col. John Graves, and the U.E. regulation, 119;
    his good work in Upper Canada, 122;
    invites Americans to cross the border, 123;
    and road-building, 135.

  Smart, Rev. William, on the Loyalists in Upper Canada, 111, 116.

  Sons of Liberty and the Loyalists, 23.

  Stamp Act, the, some effects of, 21.

  Stuart, Rev. John, at Cataraqui, 133.


  Tarleton’s Loyal Cavalry, success in the Carolinas, 33-4.

  Tea duty, Loyalist objection to, 11.

  Test laws, tyranny of, 26;
    not strictly enforced, 27.

  Tories, American, get support of English Tories, 7;
    loyalty of, 8;
    an Episcopalian party, 15;
    a social comparison with Whigs, 16;
    tarring and feathering of, 22, 23;
    test laws, 27-30.

  Tryon, Governor, and Loyalist success, 34.


  United Empire Loyalists, origin of name, 118-19.
    See Loyalists.

  Upper Canada, migration of Loyalists into determines form of
        government, 5-6;
    Loyalists removed to, 95;
    settlements in, 97-100;
    ‘Family Compact’ party, 111;
    names of districts in, 120-1;
    Americans flock into, 123-5;
    schools and churches in, 132-4;
    means of communication, 134-5.


  Van Alstine, Major, and settlement of Loyalists, 100, 111;
    his grant, 117.

  Van Schaak, Peter, a Whig, disapproves of test laws, 26-7.

  Versailles, Peace of, and the Loyalists, 46-52.

  Virginia and the Loyalists, 17, 47.


  Washington, George, his aversion to the idea of independence, 13;
    a comparison, 16;
    approves the persecution of Loyalists, 23-4;
    on the Loyalist raids, 44;
    refuses to treat with Loyalists, 45;
    his advice to the Loyalists, 50.

  Whigs, American, get support of English Whigs, 7;
    their change of front, 13;
    a Presbyterian party, 15;
    a social comparison with Tories, 16;
    a powerful organization formed to stamp out Loyalism, 24-5;
    and the test laws, 27.

  Winslow, Edward, on conditions of Loyalist refugees, 61;
    on New Brunswick, 71-2, 75-6, 78, 80;
    and the wealthy widow, 84;
    on his house, 127-8.





THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton of the University of Toronto


A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for popular reading,
designed to set forth, in historic continuity, the principal events and
movements in Canada, from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.

PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

     1. _The Dawn of Canadian History_
         A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
           BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

     2. _The Mariner of St Malo_
         A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
           BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

     3. _The Founder of New France_
         A Chronicle of Champlain
           BY CHARLES W. COLBY

     4. _The Jesuit Missions_
         A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
           BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

     5. _The Seigneurs of Old Canada_
         A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
           BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

     6. _The Great Intendant_
         A Chronicle of Jean Talon
           BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

     7. _The Fighting Governor_
         A Chronicle of Frontenac
           BY CHARLES W. COLBY

PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

     8. _The Great Fortress_
         A Chronicle of Louisbourg
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

     9. _The Acadian Exiles_
         A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
           BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

    10. _The Passing of New France_
         A Chronicle of Montcalm
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

    11. _The Winning of Canada_
         A Chronicle of Wolfe
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

    12. _The Father of British Canada_
         A Chronicle of Carleton
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

    13. _The United Empire Loyalists_
         A Chronicle of the Great Migration
           BY W. STEWART WALLACE

    14. _The War with the United States_
         A Chronicle of 1812
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

    PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

    15. _The War Chief of the Ottawas_
         A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
           BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

    16. _The War Chief of the Six Nations_
         A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
           BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

    17. _Tecumseh_
         A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
           BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND

PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

    18. _The ‘Adventurers of England’ on Hudson Bay_
         A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
           BY AGNES C. LAUT

    19. _Pathfinders of the Great Plains_
         A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
           BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

    20. _Adventurers of the Far North_
         A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
           BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

    21. _The Red River Colony_
         A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
           BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

    22. _Pioneers of the Pacific Coast_
         A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
           BY AGNES C. LAUT

    23. _The Cariboo Trail_
         A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
           BY AGNES C. LAUT

PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

    24. _The Family Compact_
         A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
           BY W. STEWART WALLACE

    25. _The Patriotes of ’37_
         A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
           BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

    26. _The Tribune of Nova Scotia_
         A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
           BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT

    27. _The Winning of Popular Government_
         A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
           BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN

PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

    28. _The Fathers of Confederation_
         A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
           BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

    29. _The Day of Sir John Macdonald_
         A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
           BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

    30. _The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier_
         A Chronicle of Our Own Times
           BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

    31. _All Afloat_
         A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
           BY WILLIAM WOOD

    32. _The Railway Builders_
         A Chronicle of Overland Highways
           BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

    Published by
    Glasgow, Brook & Company
    TORONTO, CANADA