_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.