THE TREATY OF 1783 AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS
[Sidenote: The Treaty of 1783.]
In the War of American Independence the English had no one to match
against Washington. In the negotiations for the peace which ended
the war they had no one to match against Benjamin Franklin. The
outcome of Franklin’s astuteness was the Treaty of 1783,[165] by
which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the thirteen
United States, and which alike for Great Britain and for Canada was
rather the beginning than the end of troubles.
The first words of the second article of the treaty, which
purported to determine the boundaries of the United States, were
as follows, ‘That all disputes which might arise in future on
the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be
prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared that the following are
and shall be their boundaries.’
[Sidenote: The boundary disputes.]
The words were no doubt used in good faith; but, as a matter of
fact, nowhere in the world has there been such a long series of
boundary disputes between two nations, as in North America between
Great Britain and the United States.
[Sidenote: In 1783 the geography of North America was little known.]
[Sidenote: The disputes were between provinces as well as nations.]
The disputes were to a certain extent inevitable. When the Treaty
of 1783 was signed, half North America was unknown; while within
the colonized or semi-colonized area, the coast-line, the courses
of the rivers, the lie of the land, had never been accurately
mapped out. There were well-known names and phrases, but the
precise points which they designated were uncertain. It was easy
to use geographical expressions in drawing up a treaty, but
exceedingly difficult, when the treaty had been signed, to decide
what was the correct interpretation of its terms. The matter
was further complicated by the fact that in 1783, and for many
years afterwards, until the Dominion Act was passed, Nova Scotia
was a separate colony from Canada; while in the year after the
treaty, 1784, New Brunswick was carved out of Nova Scotia and also
became a separate colony. Similarly the United States, though
federated, were still separate entities, and Maine was in 1820
separated from Massachusetts, just as New Brunswick had been cut
off from Nova Scotia. Thus on either side there were provincial
as well as national claims to be considered and adjusted; and it
resulted that the Treaty of 1783, which was to have been a final
settlement of the quarrel between Great Britain and her old North
American colonies, left an aftermath of troublesome questions,
causing constant friction, endless negotiations, and a succession
of supplementary conventions. A summary of the controversies and
conventions, out of which the International Boundary was evolved,
will be found in the Second Appendix to this book. There is more
than one reason why such a multiplicity of disputes arose, why the
disputes were so prolonged and at times so dangerous, and why the
issues were as a rule unfavourable to Great Britain and to Canada.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of 1783 made a precedent for future American
successes in diplomacy.]
First and foremost, not only was the original Treaty of 1783, in
the then state of geographical knowledge, or rather of geographical
ignorance, necessarily both inadequate and inaccurate, but in
addition those who negotiated it on the British side, in their
anxiety to make peace, were, as has been stated, completely
outmatched in bargaining by the representatives of the United
States. The result was that the weak points of the treaty, and the
conspicuous success of the Americans in securing it, infected all
subsequent negotiations. The wording of the document was played for
all and more than it was worth, and there grew up something like a
tradition that, as each new issue arose between the two nations,
the Americans should take and the English should concede.
[Sidenote: Great Britain was more weighted by foreign complications
than the United States.]
In the second place, Great Britain was always at a disadvantage in
negotiating with the United States, owing to her many vulnerable
interests and her complicated foreign relations. The American
Government was, so to speak, on the spot, concentrating on each
point exclusive attention and undivided strength. The British
Government was at a distance, with its eyes on all parts of the
world, and remembering only too well how the first great quarrel
with the United States had resulted in a world in arms against
Great Britain. At each step in the endless chaffering British
Ministers had to count the cost more anxiously than those who spoke
for a young and strong nation, as a rule untrammeled by relations
to other foreign Powers and as a rule, though not always, assured
of public support in America in proportion to the firmness of their
demands and the extent of their claims.
[Sidenote: Canada was not one nation.]
Lastly, it has often been said that Canada has grievously
suffered through British diplomacy. This is to a large extent
true, but one great reason has been that Canada, as it exists
to-day, was not in existence when most of the boundary questions
came up for settlement. The interests of a Dominion--except in
potentiality--were not at stake, and there was no Canadian nation
to make its voice heard. For two-thirds of a century after the
United States became an independent nation, in the North-West
the Hudson’s Bay Company or its rivals in the fur trade, on the
Pacific coast the beginnings of a small separate British colony,
were nearly all that was in evidence. Boundary questions in North
America between Great Britain and the United States could be
presented, and were presented, as of unequal value to the two
parties. Any given area in dispute was portrayed as of vital
importance to the United States, on the ground that it involved
the limits of their homeland and their people’s heritage. The
same area, it would be plausibly argued, was of little consequence
to Great Britain as affecting only a distant corner of some one
of the most remote and least known of her many dependencies. This
was inevitable while Canada was in the making. Yet in spite of
errors in diplomacy, and in spite of what on a review of all the
conditions must fairly be judged to have been great and singular
difficulties, the net result has been to secure for the Canadian
nation a territory which most peoples on the world’s surface would
regard as a great and a goodly inheritance.
[Sidenote: Provisions in the 1783 treaty which referred to the
Loyalists.]
The second article of the Treaty of 1783, which attempted to define
the boundaries of the United States and therefore of Canada also,
was by no means the only provision of the treaty which affected
Canada. The third article was of much importance, giving to
American fishermen certain fishing rights on the coasts of British
North America; but the fourth, fifth and sixth articles require
more special notice, inasmuch as, though Canada was not actually
mentioned in them, their indirect effect was to create a British
population in Canada, to make Canada a British colony instead of
a foreign dependency of Great Britain, and to strongly accentuate
the severance between those parts of North America which held to
the British connexion and the provinces which had renounced their
allegiance to the British Crown.
The fourth article provided ‘that creditors on either side shall
meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in
sterling money of all bonâ fide debts heretofore contracted’.
The fifth article, while discriminating between those who had and
those who had not borne arms against the United States, was to the
effect that Congress should ‘earnestly recommend’ to the several
states restitution of confiscated property and rights, and a
revision of the laws directed against the Loyalists of America. The
sixth article prohibited future confiscations and prosecutions in
the case of persons who had taken part in the late war.[166]
[Sidenote: Bitter feeling in the United States against the
Loyalists.]
In the negotiations, which preceded the conclusion of peace, no
point was more strongly debated between the commissioners of the
two countries than the question of the treatment to be awarded to
those who had adhered to the British cause in the American states
during the war. The British Government was bound in common honesty
to use every effort to safeguard the lives and interests of those
who had remained loyal under every stress of persecution. On the
American side, on the other hand, there was the most bitter feeling
against the Tories, as they were called, a feeling generally
shared by the members of the revolutionary party from Washington
downwards. As in all cases of the kind, Loyalists included good and
bad, worthy and unworthy, interested placemen or merchants as well
as men who acted on and suffered for principle alone. There were
men among them of high standing and reputation, such as William
Franklin the Loyalist Governor of New Jersey, only son of Benjamin
Franklin, and Sir William Pepperell, grandson of the man who
besieged and took Louisbourg in 1745. There were also men of the
type of Arnold, who deserved to be held as traitors. Many of the
Loyalists had fought hard, and barbarities could be laid, directly
or indirectly, to their charge. Their record was associated with
the memories of the border war, of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; but
equally on the American side could be found instances of cruelty
and ruthlessness. The war had been a civil war, long drawn out,
spasmodic, fought through largely by guerilla bands. It did not
lie with either side to monopolize claims to righteousness or to
perpetuate bitterness against their foes.
[Sidenote: The sufferings of the Loyalists were increased by the
spasmodic operations of the English in the war,]
There were two special causes which made the hard lot of the
Loyalists harder than it might otherwise have been. The first was
the unfortunate action of the English in occupying cities or tracts
of country and then again abandoning them. When Howe evacuated
Boston, over 900 Loyalists are said to have left with him for
Halifax. When the British army was withdrawn from Philadelphia in
June, 1778, 3,000 Loyalists followed in its train. But the misery
caused by the uncertain policy of the British Government or the
British generals cannot be measured merely by the actual number
of refugees on each occasion. A very large proportion of the
American population was at heart neutral, and they suffered from
not knowing whom to trust and whom to obey at a given time and
place. In the autumn of 1776 New Jersey was brought under complete
British control. The disaster at Trenton supervened, and in about
six months the whole country was given up. Much the same happened
in the southern states; at one time the English, at another the
Americans were masters of this or that district. The result was
that bitterness was intensified by prolonged uncertainty and
suspicion. Numbers of citizens, who only asked which master they
should serve, suffered at the hands of both. There would have been
far less misery and far better feeling if from the beginning to the
end of the war certain areas and no more had always remained in
British occupation, instead of towns and provinces being bandied
about from one side to the other.
[Sidenote: and by the separate action of the several States.]
The second special cause of suffering to the Loyalists was the
separate action of the several states. England was not fighting one
nation but thirteen different communities; and it may be said that
in each of the thirteen there was civil war. The smaller the area
in which there is strife, the meaner and more bitter the strife
will be. With a great national struggle were intertwined petty
rivalries, local jealousies, family dissensions. Men remembered
old grudges, paid off old scores, reproduced in the worst forms
the features which in quieter times had disfigured the narrow
provincial life of the separate states. Had the states been one
instead of many, there would have been a wider patriotism and a
broader outlook, for Congress with all its faults was a larger
minded body than a state legislature. Had they again been all one,
there would not have been a series of unwholesome precedents for
persecution of the minority. As it was, each state passed law after
law against the Loyalists, and each in its turn could point to what
its neighbour had done, in the hope of making a further exhibition
of patriotism, more extravagant and more unjust.
[Sidenote: Powerlessness of Congress in the matter.]
How helpless the central body was in the matter, as compared with
the separate sovereign states, is shown by the wording of the fifth
article of the Peace. All that the American commissioners could
be induced to sign was that Congress should ‘earnestly recommend
to the legislatures of the respective states’ a policy of amnesty
and restitution. It does not seem to have been anticipated that
the state legislatures would comply with the recommendation. At
any rate it appears that the emissaries of the United States who
conducted the peace negotiations were reluctant to consent even
to this small concession; that it was in after years represented
on the American side as a mere form of words, necessary to bring
matters to a conclusion and to save the face of the British
Government; that its inadequacy was hotly assailed in both Houses
of the British Parliament; and that it proved to be as a matter of
fact in the main a dead letter.
[Sidenote: Debates in Parliament on the question of the Loyalists.]
[Sidenote: The debate in the House of Lords.]
Very bitter were the comments made in Parliament upon these
provisions in the treaty by the opponents of Shelburne’s ministry.
On the 17th of February, 1783, the Preliminary Articles of
Peace were discussed in either House. In the House of Lords
Lord Carlisle led the attack, moving an amendment in which the
subject of the Loyalists was prominently mentioned. The terms of
the amendment lamented the necessity for subscribing to articles
‘which, considering the relative situation of the belligerent
Powers, we must regard as inadequate to our just expectations and
derogatory to the honour and dignity of Great Britain’. Various
strong speeches followed, Lord Walsingham did not mince his words,
nor did Lord Townshend. Lord Stormont spoke of the Loyalists as
‘men whom Britain was bound in justice and honour, gratitude and
affection, and every tie to provide for and protect. Yet alas for
England as well as them they were made a price of peace’. Lord
George Germain, now Lord Sackville, who had so largely contributed
to the calamitous issue of the war, was to the front in condemning
the cruel abandonment of the Loyalists. In order to prove the
futility of the terms intended to safeguard their interests, he
referred to a resolution passed by the Legislature of Virginia
as late as the 17th of December previously, to the effect that
all demands for restitution of confiscated property were wholly
inadmissible. Lord Loughborough in a brilliant speech spoke out
that ‘in ancient or in modern history 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’. The House sat
until 4.30 on the following morning, the attendance of peers being
at one period of the debate larger than on any previous occasion in
the reign of George the Third; and the division gave the Government
a majority of thirteen.
[Sidenote: The Debate in the House of Commons.]
[Sidenote: The Government defeated.]
Meanwhile the House of Commons were also engaged in discussing
the Peace, and here Lord John Cavendish moved an amendment to the
Address, which was supplemented by a further amendment in which
Lord North raised the case of the Loyalists. The Government fared
ill at the hands of the best speakers in the House, of all shades
of opinion. ‘Never was the honour, the humanity, the principles,
the policy of a nation so grossly abused,’ said Lord North now
happy in opposition, ‘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,’ and he denounced the discrimination
made in the fifth article of the Peace against those who had borne
arms for Great Britain. Lord Mulgrave spoke of the Peace as ‘a
lasting monument of national disgrace’. Fox was found in opposition
to Shelburne with whom he had parted company, and on the same side
as his old opponent Lord North with whom he was soon to join hands.
Burke spoke of the vast number of Loyalists who ‘had been deluded
by this country and had risked everything in our cause’. Sheridan
used bitter words to the same effect; and even Wilberforce, who
seconded the Address on the Government side, had to own that, when
he considered the case of the Loyalists, ‘there he saw his country
humiliated.’ The debate went on through the night, and when the
division was taken at 7.30 the next morning, the ministers found
themselves beaten by sixteen votes.
[Sidenote: Resolutions by Lord John Cavendish.]
[Sidenote: Shelburne’s ministry defeated.]
But the House of Commons had not yet done with the Peace, or with
the ministry. Four days later, on the 21st of February, Lord John
Cavendish moved five resolutions in the House. The first three
resolutions confirmed the Peace and led to little debate, but the
fourth and fifth were a direct attack on the Government. The fourth
resolution was as follows, ‘The concessions made to the adversaries
of Great Britain, by the said Provisional Treaty and Preliminary
Articles, are greater than they were entitled to, either from the
actual situation of their respective possessions, or from their
comparative strength.’ The terms of the fifth resolution were,
‘that this House do feel the regard due from this nation to every
description of men, who, with the risk of their lives and the
sacrifice of their property, have distinguished their loyalty, and
been conspicuous for their fidelity during a long and calamitous
war, and to assure His Majesty that they shall take every proper
method to relieve them, which the state of the circumstances of
this country will permit.’ A long debate on the fourth resolution
ended in the defeat of the Government by seventeen votes; and, the
Opposition being satisfied by carrying this vote of censure, the
fifth resolution was withdrawn. The result of the night’s work
was to turn out Shelburne and his colleagues, and to make way
for the famous coalition of Fox and North, which had been amply
foreshadowed in the debates.
[Sidenote: Unnecessary concessions made on the English side in the
Peace of 1783.]
It will be noted that, though the case of the Loyalists was made
a text for denouncing the terms of the Peace, the Government was
defeated avowedly not so much on the ground of dishonourable
conduct to the friends of England as on that of having made
unnecessary concessions. The case of the Opposition was strong, and
the case of the Government was weak, because sentiment was backed
by common sense. The Loyalists had been shabbily treated, without
any adequate reason either for sacrificing them or for making
various other concessions. That was the verdict of the House of
Commons then, and it is the verdict of history now. England had
become relatively not weaker but stronger since the disaster at
Yorktown, and the United States were at least as much in need of
peace as was the mother country. The Americans had done more by
bluff than by force, and the wholesale cession of territory, the
timorous abandonment of men and places, was an unnecessary price of
peace. The case of the Opposition was overwhelming, and it carried
conviction in spite of the antecedents of many of those who spoke
for it. North and Sackville, who declaimed against the terms which
had been conceded, were the men who had mismanaged the war. Fox was
to the front in attacking the Peace, and with reason, for he had
been the chief opponent in the Rockingham cabinet of Shelburne and
his emissary Oswald, but Fox beyond all men had lent his energies
to supporting the Americans against his own country in the time of
her trial.
[Sidenote: Excuses made for the policy of the British Government
with regard to the Loyalists.]
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Loyalists in the various states.]
What the Government pleaded in defence of the articles which
related to the Loyalists was first, that they could not secure
peace on any other terms; secondly, that the Americans would
carry out the terms honourably and in good faith; and thirdly
that, if the terms were not carried out, England would compensate
her friends. The first plea, as we have seen, was rejected. The
second plea events proved to be ill founded. Congress made the
recommendation to the state legislatures which the fifth article
prescribed, but no attention was paid to it. ‘Confiscation still
went on actively, governors of the states were urged to exchange
lists of the proscribed persons, that no Tory might find a
resting-place in the United States, and in nearly every state they
were disfranchized’.[167] The Acts against the Loyalists were not
repealed, and in some cases were supplemented. In some states life
was not safe any more than property, and the revolution closed with
a reign of terror. South Carolina stood almost alone in passing,
in March, 1784, an Act for restitution of property and permitting
Loyalists to return to the state. In Pennsylvania Tories were still
disfranchized as late as 1801.
In retaliation for the non-fulfilment of the fifth and sixth
articles of the treaty relating to the Loyalists, as well as of the
fourth article by which creditors on either side were to meet with
no lawful impediment in recovering their bonâ fide debts,[168] the
British Government, in their turn, refused to carry out in full
the seventh article under which all the places which were occupied
by British garrisons within the borders of the United States were
to be evacuated ‘with all convenient speed’; and it was not until
the year 1796, after further negotiations had taken place and a
new treaty, Jay’s Treaty of 1794, had been signed, that the inland
posts were finally given up. Meanwhile the Government took in hand
compensation for the sorely tried Loyalists, redeeming the pledges
which had been given and the honour of the nation.
[Sidenote: Compensation given to the Loyalists from Imperial Funds.]
A full account of the steps which were taken to compensate in
money the American Loyalists is given in a _Historical view of
the Commission for inquiry into the losses, services and claims
of the American Loyalists_ which was published in London in 1815,
by John Eardley Wilmot, one of the commissioners. Compensation or
relief had been going on during the war, for, as has been seen,
each stage of the war and each abandonment of a city implied a
number of refugees with claims on the justice or the liberality of
the British Government. Thus Wilmot tells us that in the autumn
of 1782 the sums issued by the Treasury amounted to an annual
amount of £40,280 distributed among 315 persons, over and above
occasional sums in gross to the amount of between £17,000 and
£18,000 per annum for the three last years, being payments applied
to particular or extraordinary losses or services. Shelburne named
two members of Parliament as commissioners to inquire into the
application of these relief funds; and they reduced the amount
stated above to £25,800, but by June, 1783, added another £17,445,
thus bringing up the total to £43,245.
In July, 1783, the Portland administration, which had taken the
place of Shelburne’s ministry and which included Fox and North,
passed an Act ‘appointing commissioners 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’.[169] The Act was passed for
two years only, expiring in July, 1785; and the 25th of March,
1784, was fixed as the date by which all claims were to be sent
in. But the time for settlement was found to be too short. In
the session of 1785 the Act was renewed and amplified, and the
time for receiving claims was extended under certain conditions
till May 1st, 1786. In that year the Act was again renewed, and
it was further renewed in 1787. Commissioners were sent out to
Nova Scotia, to Canada, and to the United States. On the 6th of
June, 1788, there was a debate in Parliament on the subject of
compensation, which was followed by passing a new Act[170], the
operation of which was again twice extended, and in 1790 the long
inquiry came to an end. The total grant allowed was £3,112,455,
including a sum of £253,000 awarded to the Proprietaries or the
trustees of the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania, North Carolina,
Virginia and Maryland, the Penn family receiving the sum of
£100,000 converted into an annuity of £4,000 per annum.
It was a long drawn out inquiry, and the unfortunate Loyalists
chafed at the delay; but the outcome was not illiberal and showed
that England had not forgotten her friends. William Pitt, who as
Prime Minister carried the matter through, had been Chancellor of
the Exchequer in Shelburne’s ministry which was responsible for
the articles of the Peace, and his subsequent action testified
that amid the many liabilities of England which he was called upon
to face, he well remembered the pledges given in respect of the
Loyalists of America.
[Sidenote: The Loyalist soldiers.]
The number of claimants who applied for money compensation was
5,072: 954 claims were withdrawn or not prosecuted, and the number
of claims examined was 4,118.[171] The very large majority of the
Loyalists therefore did not participate in the grant, but for a
great many of them homes, grants of land and, for the time being,
rations were found in Canada, where General Haldimand and after
him Guy Carleton, then Lord Dorchester, cared for the friends of
England. Among the most deserving and the most valuable of the
refugees were the members of ‘His Majesty’s Provincial Regiments’,
the various Loyalist corps raised in America, the commanding
officers of which, on the 14th of March, 1783, presented a touching
and dignified memorial to Carleton while still Commander-in-Chief
at New York. They set out their claims and services. They asked
that provision should be made for the disabled, the widows, and
the orphans; that the rank of the officers might be permanent
in America and that they might be placed on half pay upon the
reduction of their regiments; and ‘that grants of land may be made
to them in some of His Majesty’s American provinces, and that they
may be assisted in making settlements, in order that they and their
children may enjoy the benefits of the British Government’.[172]
[Sidenote: Numbers, with places, and destinations of the Loyalists.]
[Sidenote: New York the principal Loyalist state.]
Where did the Loyalists come from, where did they go, and what
was their number? The questions are difficult to answer. In all
the states there were many Loyalists, though the numbers were
much larger in some than in others, and varied at different times
according to special circumstances or the characters and actions
of local leaders on either side. New England and Virginia were
to the front on the Patriot, Whig, or Revolutionary side. In New
England Massachusetts, as always, took the lead. Here the Loyalist
cause was weakened and depressed by the early evacuation of Boston
and the departure of a large number of Loyalist citizens who
accompanied Howe’s army when it left for Halifax. Of the other New
England states, Connecticut, though it supplied a large number
of men to Washington’s army, seems to have contained relatively
more Loyalists than the other New England states, probably because
it bordered on the principal Loyalist stronghold, New York. In
Virginia Washington’s personal influence counted for much, and the
King’s governor Lord Dunmore, by burning down the town of Norfolk,
would seem to have alienated sympathies from the British side. New
York was the last state to declare for independence. Throughout
the war it contained a stronger proportion of Loyalists than any
other state, and of the claims to compensation which were admitted
by the commissioners quite one-third were credited to New York.
The commercial interests of the port, traditional jealousy of New
England, neighbourhood to Canada, made for the British connexion.
Family and church interests were strong, the De Lanceys leading
the Episcopalian party on the side of the King, as against the
Livingstons and the Presbyterians and Congregationalists who threw
in their lot with the Revolution. Most of all, after Howe occupied
New York, it was held strongly as the British head quarters till
the end of the war, and became the resort of Loyalist refugees
from other parts of America. In Pennsylvania the Loyalists were
numerous. Here the Quaker influence was strong, opposed to war and
to revolution. As already stated, when Philadelphia was abandoned,
3,000 Loyalists left with the British army. In the south the
Loyalists were strong, but in the back country where there were
comparatively new settlers, many of Scotch descent, rather than on
the coast. In North Carolina parties are said to have been evenly
divided. In South Carolina, and possibly in Georgia also, the
Loyalists seem at one time to have preponderated. When the British
garrisons at Charleston and Savannah were finally withdrawn, 13,271
Loyalists were enumerated as intending to leave also, including
8,676 blacks. But any calculation is of little avail, for Loyalists
were made and unmade by the vicissitudes of the war. In America, as
in other countries in revolutionary times, it must be supposed that
the stalwarts on either side were very far from including the whole
population.
[Sidenote: The Loyalists in Canada.]
If it is not easy to trace where the Loyalists came from, it is
equally difficult with any accuracy to state, except in general
terms, where they all went. It was not a case of a single wave of
emigration starting from a given point and directed to a given
point. For years refugees were drifting off in one direction and
another. Many went during the war overland to Canada. Many were
carried by sea to Nova Scotia. A large number went to England.
Before and after the conclusion of the Peace there was considerable
emigration from the southern states to Florida, the Bahamas,
and the West Indies. But Canada, including Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, became the chief permanent home of the Loyalists. It was
the country which wanted them most, and where they found a place
not as isolated refugees but as a distinct and an honoured element
in the population. The coming of the Loyalists to Canada created
the province of New Brunswick and that of Ontario or Upper Canada.
[Sidenote: Loyalist colonization of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.]
As far as dates can be given for an emigration which, was spread
over a number of years, 1783 may be taken as the birth year of the
Loyalist settlements in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and 1784
as that of Upper Canada. We have an accurate official account of
the Loyalists in the maritime provinces in the year 1784, entitled
a report on Nova Scotia by Colonel Robert Morse, R.E.[173] The
scope of the report included New Brunswick, which was in that year
separated from Nova Scotia; and it is noteworthy that the writer
recommended union of the maritime provinces with Canada, placing
the capital for the united colony in Cape Breton. The Loyalists in
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick or, as Colonel Morse styled them, the
‘new inhabitants, viz., the disbanded troops and Loyalists who came
into this province since the Peace’, were mustered in the summer
of 1784 and were found to number 28,347, including women, children
and servants. Among them were 3,000 negroes, largely from New York.
As against these newcomers there were only 14,000 old British
inhabitants, of whom a great part had been disaffected during the
war owing to their New England connexion. Of the refugees 9,000
were located on the St. John river, and nearly 8,000 at the new
township of Shelburne in the south-west corner of Nova Scotia.
Morse gave a pitiable account of the condition of the immigrants
at the time when he wrote. Very few were as yet settled on their
lands; if not fed by the Government they must perish. ‘They have
no other country to go to--no other asylum.’ There had been the
usual emigration story in the case of Nova Scotia, supplemented by
exceptional circumstances. Glowing accounts had been circulated
of its attractions as a home and place of refuge. Thousands who
left New York after the Peace had been signed, and before the
port was finally evacuated by the British troops, went to Nova
Scotia, having to find homes somewhere. Then ensued disappointment,
hardship and deep distress; and the country and its climate were
maligned, as before they had been unduly praised. Nova Scotia was
christened in the United States Nova Scarcity, and the climate was
described as consisting of nine months winter and three months cold
weather.[174] In the end many of the emigrants drifted off again.
Some succumbed to their troubles; but the strong ones held on,
and the Loyalists made of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia sound and
thriving provinces of the British Empire.
[Sidenote: Loyalist colonization of the province of Ontario.]
In addition to the refugees who have been enumerated above,
some 3,000 settled in Cape Breton Island, others found homes in
the Gaspé peninsula on the Bay of Chaleurs, others again on the
seignory of Sorel at the mouth of the Richelieu river, which
Haldimand had bought for the Crown in 1780[175] and which had a
special value from a military point of view; but more important
was the emigration to Upper Canada and the settlement of the
present province of Ontario. Through the war the Loyalists had been
coming in from the revolting states, many of them on arrival in
Canada taking service for the Crown in the provincial regiments.
When peace came, more arrived and, with the disbanded soldiers,
became colonists of Canada. In July, 1783, an additional Royal
Instruction was given to Haldimand to allot lands to such of the
‘inhabitants of the colonies and provinces, now in the United
States of America’, as were ‘desirous of retaining their allegiance
to us and of living in our dominions and for this purpose are
disposed to take up and improve lands in our province of Quebec’,
and also to such non-commissioned officers and privates as might be
disbanded in the province and be inclined to become settlers in it.
The lands were to be divided into distinct seignories or fiefs, in
each seignory a glebe was to be reserved, and every recipient of
land was to make a declaration to the effect that ‘I will maintain
and defend to the utmost of my power the authority of the King in
his Parliament as the supreme legislature of this province’.[176]
Along the St. Lawrence from Lake St. Francis upwards; in the
neighbourhood of Cataraqui or Fort Frontenac, near the outlet of
Lake Ontario, where the name of Kingston tells its own tale; on
the Bay of Quinté in Lake Ontario; near the Niagara river; and
over against Detroit, the Loyalists were settled. The strength of
the settlements was shown by the fact that by the Imperial Act of
1791 Upper Canada was constituted a separate province. About that
date there seem to have been some 25,000 white inhabitants in Upper
Canada, but the number of Loyalists who came into the province
before or immediately after the Peace was much smaller.[177] It
is impossible to give even the roughest estimate of the total
number of emigrants from the United States in consequence of the
war, or even of the total number of Loyalist settlers in British
North America. A census report estimates that in all about
40,000 Loyalists took refuge in British North America.[178] Mr.
Kingsford[179] thinks that the original emigration to the British
American provinces did not exceed 45,000; a modern American
writer[180] places the number of those who came to Canada and the
Maritime Provinces within the few years before and succeeding the
Peace at 60,000. Whatever were their numbers, the refugees from
the United States leavened the whole history of the Dominion; and
from the date of their arrival Canada entered on a new era of her
history and made a long step forward to becoming a nation.
[Sidenote: The United Empire Loyalists.]
The British Government and the nation on the whole did their duty
by the Loyalists in Canada. They gave money, they gave lands, they
gave food and clothing, and they gave them a title of honour. At a
council meeting held at Quebec on the 9th of November, 1789, Lord
Dorchester said that it was his wish to put a mark of honour 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; and it was ordered that the land boards should
keep a registry of them ‘to the end that their posterity may be
discriminated from future settlers’. From that time they were
known as the United Empire Loyalists; and when in the year 1884
the centenary of their arrival in Canada was kept, the celebration
showed that the memory of their sufferings and of their loyalty was
still cherished, that their descendants still rightfully claimed
distinction as bearing the names and inheriting the traditions of
those who through good and evil report remained true to the British
cause.
[Sidenote: American persecution of the Loyalists a political
mistake.]
In the debate in the House of Commons on the terms of the Peace,
Lord North, speaking of the attitude of the Americans toward the
Loyalists, said, ‘I term it impolitic, for it will establish
their character as a vindictive people. It would have become the
interests as well as the character of a newly-created people to
have shown their propensity to compassion’. The record of the
treatment of the Loyalists by their compatriots in the United
States is not the brightest page in American history. The terrible
memory of the border war was not calculated to make the victorious
party lean to the side of compassion when the fighting was over,
but when all allowance has been made for the bitterness which was
the inevitable result of the long drawn out struggle, the Americans
cannot be said to have shown much good faith or generosity in
their dealings with the Loyalists or much political wisdom. There
were exceptions among them. Men like Jay and Alexander Hamilton
and the partisan leader in the south, General Marion, gave their
influence for justice and mercy; but on the whole justice and mercy
were sadly wanting. The newly-created people, as Lord North styled
the Americans, did not show themselves wise in their generation.
Their policy towards the Loyalists was not that of men confident
in the strength and the righteousness of their cause; nor, if
they wished to drive the English out of America and, as Franklin
tried in his dealings with Oswald, to secure Canada for the United
States, did they take the right course to achieve their end. This
point is forcibly put by the American writer Sabine, whose book
published in 1847 is not wanting in strong patriotic bias. He
shows how British colonization in Canada and Nova Scotia was the
direct result of the persecution of the Loyalists, and sums up that
‘humanity to the adherents of the Crown and prudent regard for our
own interests required a general amnesty’.[181] The Americans, for
their own future, would have done well to conciliate rather than to
punish, to retain citizens by friendly treatment not to force them
into exile. Their policy bore its inevitable fruit, and the most
determined opponents of the United States in after years were the
men and the children of the men who were driven out and took refuge
in Canada.
[Sidenote: Reasons for the persecution of the Loyalists.]
[Sidenote: The American War of Independence as contrasted with the
later war between the North and the South.]
The policy was unwise, but it was intelligible; and it is the more
intelligible when viewed in the light of the contrast furnished
by the sequel to the great civil war between the Northern and
the Southern states. As time goes on and the world becomes more
civilized, public and private vendettas tend to go out of fashion
and individuals and nations alike find it a little easier to
forgive, though possibly not to forget. In any case, therefore,
the outcome of a war eighty years later than the American War of
Independence might have been expected to bear traces of kindlier
feeling and broader humanity. But there were other reasons for the
contrast between the attitude taken up by the victorious Northern
states towards the defeated Southern confederacy and that of the
successful Revolutionary party towards their Loyalist opponents.
The cause for which the Northerners fought and conquered was the
maintenance of the Union; the cause for which the partisans of the
Revolution fought and conquered was separation. It was therefore
logical and consistent, when the fighting was over, in the former
case to do what could be done to cement the Union, in the latter
to do all that would accentuate and complete separation. Amnesty
was in a sense the natural outcome of the later war, proscription
was in a sense the natural outcome of the earlier. Slowly and
reluctantly the revolting states came to the determination to part
company with the mother country. Having made their decision and
staked their all upon carrying it to a successful issue, they were
minded also to part company for all time with those among them who
held the contrary view. They were a new people, not wholly sure of
their ground; they would not run the risk, as it seemed, of trying
to reconcile men whose hearts were not with theirs.
Furthermore, in contrasting the two wars it will be noted that
in the later there was a geographical division between the two
parties which did not exist in the earlier case. The great civil
war was a fight between North and South; there was not fighting
in each single state of the Union. The result, broadly speaking,
was a definite conquest of a large and well-defined area where the
feeling had been solidly hostile, and the only practical method
of permanently retaining the conquered states was by amnesty
and reconciliation. The War of Independence, as already pointed
out, was not thus geographically defined. In each separate state
there was civil war, local, narrow, and bitter; and, when the end
came, the solution most congenial to the victorious majority in
each small community was also a practicable though not a wise or
humane solution, viz., to weed out the malcontents and to make
good the Patriots’ losses at the expense of the Loyalists. Union
was accepted by the thirteen states as a necessity; it was not the
principle for which they contended. They fought for separation,
they jealously retained all they could of their local independence,
and each within its own limits carried out the principle of
separation to its bitter end by proscribing the adherents to the
only Union which they had known before the war, that which was
produced by common allegiance to the British Crown.
[Sidenote: The Glengarry settlers.]
The main result of the incoming of the Loyalists was to give to
Canada a Protestant British population by the side of a Roman
Catholic French community; but among the immigrants were Scottish
Highlanders from the back settlements of the province of New York,
Gaelic speaking and Roman Catholic in religion, who had served in
the war and who were very wisely settled in what is now Glengarry
county on the edge of the French Canadian districts. Here their
religion was a bond between them and the French Canadians, while
their race and traditions kept them in line with the other British
settlers of Ontario. They brought with them the honoured name of
Macdonell, and in the early years of the nineteenth century another
body of Macdonells, also disbanded soldiers, joined them from
the old country. It needs no telling how high the record of the
Macdonells stands in the annals of Canada, or how the Glengarry
settlers proved their loyalty and their worth in the war of
1812.[182]
[Sidenote: Scheme for a settlement of French Royalists in Upper
Canada.]
Side by side with this Macdonell immigration, may be noted an
abortive immigration scheme for Upper Canada, which was not British
and was later in time than the War of American Independence, but
which had something in common with the advent of the Loyalists.
This was an attempt to form a French Royalist settlement in Upper
Canada under Count Joseph de Puisaye, ‘ci devant Puisaye the
much enduring man and Royalist’,[183] a French _emigré_ who had
taken a leading part in the disastrous landing at Quiberon Bay
in 1795. In or about 1797 he seems to have made a proposal to
the British Government that they should send out a number of the
Royalist refugees to Canada. The projected settlement was to be on
military and feudal lines. ‘The same measure must be employed as
in founding the old colony of Canada.... It was the soldiery who
cleared and prepared the land for our French settlements of Canada
and Louisiana.’ The writer of the above had evidently in mind the
measures taken in the days of Louis XIV to colonize New France,
and the planting out of the Carignan-Salières Regiment.[184] The
scheme, it was anticipated, would commend itself to the Canadians
in view of the community of race, language and religion, while to
the British Government its value would consist in placing ‘decided
Royalists in a country where republican principles and republican
customs are becoming leading features’, i. e. on the frontiers
of the United States. In July, 1798, the Duke of Portland wrote
to the Administrator of Upper Canada on the subject, evidently
contemplating the possibility of a considerable emigration to
Canada of French refugees then living in England, of whom de
Puisaye and about forty others, who were to embark in the course of
the summer, would be the forerunners. The Duke laid down that de
Puisaye and his company were to be treated as American Loyalists in
the matter of allotment of land. William Windham, Pitt’s Secretary
for War, also wrote, introducing de Puisaye to the Administrator
as being personally well-known to himself, and explaining that
the object of the scheme was ‘to provide an asylum for as many as
possible of those whose adherence to the ancient laws, religion,
and constitution of their country has rendered them sacrifices
to the French Revolution’, to select by preference those who had
served in the Royalist armies, to allow them to have a settlement
of their own ‘as much as possible separate from any other body of
French, or of those persons speaking French, who may be at present
in America, or whom Government may hereafter be disposed to settle
there’, and by this comparative isolation, as well as by giving
them some element of military and feudal discipline, to preserve
to them the character ‘of a society founded on the principles of
reverence for religion and attachment to monarchy’. The scheme was
born out of due time. The coming century and the New World were
not the time and place for reviving feudal institutions. But on
paper it was an attractive scheme. Side by side with the British
Loyalists who had been driven out of the newly-formed American
republic, would be settled French Loyalists whom the Revolution had
hunted from France. Their loyalty and their sufferings for their
cause would commend them to their British fellow colonists: their
kinship in race, religion, and language would commend them to the
French Canadians, who in turn had little sympathy with a France
that knew not Church or King.
The place selected for the settlement was between Toronto and
Lake Simcoe. It was chosen as being roughly equidistant from
the French settlements in Lower Canada and those on the Detroit
river, and as being near the seat of government, Toronto then
York, and consequently within easy reach of assistance and well
under control. Here a township was laid out and called Windham. De
Puisaye and his party arrived at Montreal in October, 1798, and in
the middle of November de Puisaye himself was at York, while his
followers remained through the winter at Kingston. It was a bad
time of year for starting a new settlement in Upper Canada, and
possibly this was one of the reasons why it failed from the first.
Another was that de Puisaye, who seems to have formed a friendship
with Joseph Brant,[185] divided the small band of emigrants and
went off himself to form a second settlement on or near the Niagara
river. The scheme in short never took root: the emigrants or most
of them went elsewhere; the name Windham went elsewhere and is now
to be found in Norfolk county of Ontario. De Puisaye went back to
London after the Peace of Amiens, and the project for a French
Royalist colony in Upper Canada passed into oblivion.[186]
[Sidenote: Loyalty of the Six Nation Indians and their settlement
in Canada.]
White Loyalists were not the only residents within the present
boundaries of the United States who expatriated themselves or were
expatriated in consequence of the War of Independence, and who
settled in Canada. It has been seen that the Six Nation Indians
had in the main been steadily on the British side throughout the
war, and that prominent among them were the Mohawks led by Joseph
Brant. When peace was signed containing no recognition or safeguard
of the country of the Six Nations or of native rights, the
Indians complained with some reason that their interests had been
sacrificed by Great Britain. Under these circumstances Governor
Haldimand offered them lands on the British side of the lakes; and
a number of them--more especially the Mohawks--permanently changed
their dwelling-place still to remain under their great father, the
King of England.
There were two principal settlements. One was on the Bay of Quinté,
west of Kingston, where some of the Mohawks took up land side by
side with the disbanded Rangers, in whose company they had fought
in the war, and where the township Tyendenaga recalled the Indian
name of Brant. A larger and more important settlement was on the
Grand river, also called Ours or Ouse, flowing into Lake Erie
due west of the Niagara river. Here Haldimand, by a proclamation
dated the 25th of October, 1784, found homes for these old allies
of England, the land or part of it having, by an agreement
concluded in the previous May, been bought for the purpose from
the Mississauga Indians. The proclamation set forth that His
Majesty had been pleased to direct that, ‘in consideration of the
early attachment to his cause manifested by the Mohawk Indians,
and of the loss of their settlement which they thereby sustained,
a convenient tract of land under his protection should be chosen
as a safe and comfortable retreat for them and others of the Six
Nations who have either lost their settlements within the territory
of the American states or wish to retire from them to the British;’
and that therefore, ‘at the desire of many of these His Majesty’s
faithful allies’, a tract of land had been purchased from the
Indians between the Lakes Ontario, Huron and Erie, possession of
which was authorized to the Mohawk nation and such other of the Six
Nation Indians as wished to settle in that quarter, for them and
their posterity to enjoy for ever.
The lands allotted were defined in the proclamation as ‘six miles
deep from each side of the river, beginning at Lake Erie and
extending in that proportion to the head of the said river’. Here,
in the present counties of Brant and Haldimand, many tribesmen
of the Six Nations settled. Brant county and its principal town
Brantford recall the memory of the Mohawk leader, and such villages
as Cayuga, Oneida, and Onondaga testify that other members of
the old confederacy, in addition to the Mohawks, crossed over
to British soil. Within a few years difficulties arose as to
the intent of the grant, the Indians, headed by Brant, wishing
to sell some of the lands; a further and more formal document,
issued by Governor Simcoe in 1793, did not settle the question;
and eventually a large part of the area included in the original
grant was parted with for money payments which were invested for
the benefit of the Indians. A report made in July, 1828, and
included in a Parliamentary Blue Book of 1834[187], stated that
the number of the Indian settlers on the Grand river was at that
date under 2,000 souls: that ‘they are now considered as having
retained about 260,000 acres of land, mostly of the best quality.
Their possessions were formerly more extensive, but large tracts
have been sold by them with the permission of H. M.’s Government,
the moneys arising from which sales were either funded in England
or lent on interest in this country. The proceeds amount to about
£1,500 p.a.’.
Thus a large number of the Six Nation Indians adhered to the
English connexion and left their old homes for ever: most of them
became members of the Church of England, and the first church
built in the Province of Ontario is said to have been one for
the Mohawks.[188] In the second American war, as in the first,
they remained faithful as subjects and allies; and to this day the
descendants of the once formidable confederacy hold fast to the
old-time covenant which their forefathers made with the English
King.
FOOTNOTES:
[165] The text of the treaty is given in Appendix I.
[166] See the text of the treaty in Appendix I.
[167] From _The Loyalists in the American Revolution_, by C. H.
Van Tyne. Macmillan & Co., 1902, p. 295. The author gives in the
Appendices to his book a list of the laws passed against the
Loyalists in the various states.
[168] American creditors sued Loyalist debtors in England, while
the Loyalists’ property in America was confiscated.
[169] Act 23 Geo. III, cap. 80.
[170] 28 Geo. III, cap. 40.
[171] Wilmot’s account of the claimants and of the money awarded
is most confusing. The figures are taken from the last Appendix,
No. IX, which says the ‘claims including those in Nova Scotia and
Canada’ were 5,072. It is difficult to reconcile these figures with
those given on pp. 90-1 of the book, unless in the latter case the
claims made in Canada are omitted.
[172] See the _Annual Register_ for 1783, p. 262.
[173] Printed in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on the Archives of Canada_
for the year 1884, Note C, pp. xl, xli.
[174] See _The American Loyalists_, by Lorenzo Sabine. Boston,
1847, Historical Essay, p. 62, note.
[175] See Shortt and Doughty, p. 495, note.
[176] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 494-5.
[177] In the volume for 1891 of Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian
Archives_, p. 17, the ‘Return of Disbanded Troops and Loyalists
settled upon the King’s Lands in the Province of Quebec in the year
1784’ is given as 5,628, including women, children, and servants.
The province of Quebec at this time included both Lower and Upper
Canada.
[178] _Census of Canada_ for 1871, vol. iv; _Censuses of Canada_,
pp. xxxviii-xlii. See also p. 238, note below.
[179] vol. vii, p. 223.
[180] Mr. Van Tyne, _The Loyalists in the American Revolution_, p.
299.
[181] _The American Loyalists_, Preliminary Historical Essay, p. 91.
[182] See the _Canadian War of 1812_ (Lucas) pp. 11-15. More than
one book has been written on the Macdonells in Canada. Reference
should be made to the _Report on the Canadian Archives_ for 1896,
Notes B and C.
[183] Carlyle’s _French Revolution_, Book 4, chap. ii. Carlyle
evidently thought lightly of de Puisaye. For this French Royalist
scheme see Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for 1888,
pp. xxv-xxxi, and Note F.
[184] See Parkman’s _The Old Régime in Canada_, and see above, p.
71.
[185] See the _Canadian Archives Report_ for 1888, Note F, p. 85,
and Stone’s _Life of Brant_, vol. ii, p. 403 and note.
[186] On ‘A map of the Province of Upper Canada, describing all the
new settlements, townships, &c., with the countries adjacent from
Quebec to Lake Huron, compiled at the request of His Excellency
Major-General John G. Simcoe, first Lieutenant-Governor, by David
William Smyth, Esq., Surveyor-General’, and published by W. Faden,
London, April 12, 1800, ‘French Royalists’ is printed across Yonge
Street between York and Lake Simcoe. The map is in the Colonial
Office Library.
[187] Entitled _Aboriginal Tribes_. Printed for the House of
Commons, 617, August 14, 1834, pp. 28-9. See also the House of
Commons Blue Book 323, June 17, 1839, entitled, _Correspondence
Respecting the Indians in the British North American Provinces_.
[188] Before the War of American Independence, the Mohawks had a
church built for them in their own country in the present state
of New York by the British Government, to which Queen Anne in
1712 presented silver Communion plate and a Bible. The plate was
inscribed with the Royal Arms, in 1712, of ‘Her Majesty Anne by
the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland and Her
Plantations in North America, Queen, to Her Indian Chapel of the
Mohawks 1712’; and the Bible was inscribed, ‘To Her Majesty’s
Church of the Mohawks 1712.’ After the War of Independence, two
churches were built in Canada for the Mohawks who had emigrated to
remain under British rule, one begun in 1785 on the Grand River at
the present town of Brantford, and one on the bay of Quinté. The
Communion plate and Bible, which had been buried by the Indians for
safety during the war, were divided, four pieces of the plate and
the Bible being brought to the Brantford Church, and three to the
church on the bay of Quinté. The Brantford Church was the first
Protestant church in Canada, and a bell, said to be the first bell
to call to prayer in Ontario, and a Royal Coat of Arms were sent
out to it by the British Government in 1786. This church, known as
‘St. Paul’s Church of the Mohawks’, and in common parlance as the
old Mohawk Church, was in 1904, on a petition to the King, given by
His Majesty the title of ‘His Majesty’s Chapel of the Mohawks’, in
order to revive the old name of Queen Anne’s reign.