siege of the fortress. It was decided then to attempt to seize the
town by a piece of strategy, which was very simple though it had some
chance of success. Arnold was well acquainted with the locality and
entered heartily into the plan which was devised by Montgomery for a
combined attack on Lower Town. Late at night on the 31st December,
during a heavy snowstorm, Montgomery marched from Anse-au-Foulon along
a rough and narrow road between the foot of Cape Diamond and the St.
Lawrence, as far as Près-de-ville, or what is now Little Champlain
Street. Arnold at the same time advanced from the direction of the St.
Charles. It was arranged that the two parties should meet at the lower
end of Mountain Street and force Prescott Gate, then only a rough
structure of pickets. While the two bodies were carrying out this
plan, attacks were made on the western side of the fortress to distract
the attention of the defenders. Carleton, however, was not taken by
surprise as he had had an intimation of what was likely to happen.
Consequently the garrison was on the alert and {286} Montgomery's force
was swept by a sudden discharge of cannon and musketry as they came to
Près-de-ville--a defile with a precipice towards the river on one side,
and the scarped rock above him on the other--where all further approach
to the lower town was intercepted by a battery. Montgomery, his two
aides, and a considerable number of his soldiers were instantly killed.
In the meantime Arnold had led his party from the St. Charles to the
Sault-au-Matelot, where he captured the first barrier defended by two
guns. Arnold was wounded in the knee, and his force was obliged to
proceed without him under the command of Captain Morgan, to the attack
of the second battery near the eastern end of the narrow street, known
as Sault-au-Matelot from the most early times. They succeeded in
obtaining possession of some houses in the street, but it was not long
before they were surrounded by Carleton's men and forced to surrender
to the number of several hundreds. Arnold remained, during the winter,
in command of the congress troops, who suffered severely from
small-pox, the cold, and even want of sufficient provisions. In the
spring he was superseded by General Wooster who brought with him a
reinforcement, but the arrival of English frigates with troops and
supplies, forced him to raise the siege and retire hastily to Montreal.
A few weeks later General Burgoyne, with seven regiments, including a
large German contingent under General Frederick Riedesel, arrived at
Quebec, and arrangements were made for an active campaign against the
rebellious colonists. Arnold found it {287} prudent immediately to
leave Montreal which was again occupied by English troops. The forts
on the Richelieu were regained by the English, Carleton destroyed the
congress fleet under the command of Arnold on Lake Champlain, and Crown
Point was partly destroyed and abandoned by the retreating Americans.
Soon after these occurrences in 1775, Carleton found to his chagrin
that the command of the forces was given to Burgoyne, a much inferior
man, who had influence with Lord Germain, better known in English
history as that Lord George Sackville who had disgraced himself on the
battlefield of Minden, but had subsequently found favour with the King,
who made him one of his ministers, and gave him virtually the direction
of the campaign in America. Carleton, however, remained
Governor-General until 1778, when he was replaced at his own request by
General Haldimand, a very energetic and capable man, to whom Canadian
historians have, as a rule, never rendered adequate justice. During
these years Carleton had his difficulties arising out of the unsettled
condition of things in the province, the prospects of invasion, and the
antagonism of Chief-Justice Livius, who replaced a far better man, Hey,
and was himself superseded by the Governor-General on account of his
efforts to weaken the authority of the government at a time when
faction and rivalry should have ceased among those who wished to
strengthen British interests in America. Livius appealed to the home
authorities, and through the influence of Lord George Germain was
reinstated, though he did not find even in this {288} quarter an
approval in words of his own conduct, and never returned to fill his
former position in Canada.
It is not necessary to dwell here on the events of a war whose history
is so familiar to every one. Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga, and
his army, from which so much was expected, made prisoners of war. This
great misfortune of the British cause was followed by the alliance of
France with the States. French money, men, and ships eventually
assured the independence of the republic whose fortunes were very low
at times, despite the victory at Saratoga. England was not well served
in this American war. She had no Washington to direct her campaign.
Gage, Burgoyne, and Cornwallis were not equal to the responsibilities
thrown upon them. Cornwallis's defeat at Yorktown on the 19th October,
1781, was the death-blow to the hopes of England in North America.
This disaster led to the resignation of Lord North, whose heart was
never in the war, and to the acknowledgment by England, a few months
later, of the independence of her old colonies. Before this decisive
victory in the south, the Ohio valley and the Illinois country were in
the possession of the troops of congress. George Rogers Clark, the
bold backwoodsman of Kentucky, captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and
Vincennes, and gave the new States that valid claim to the west which
was fully recognised in the treaty of peace.
The definitive treaty of peace, which was signed in 1783, acknowledged
the independence of the old English colonies, and fixed the boundaries
of the {289} new republic and of Canada, and laid the foundation of
fruitful controversies in later times.
The United States now controlled the territory extending in the east
from Nova Scotia (which then included New Brunswick) to the head of the
Lake of the Woods and to the Mississippi River in the west, and in the
north from Canada to the Floridas in the south, the latter having again
become Spanish possessions. The boundary between Nova Scotia and the
Republic was so ill-defined that it took half a century to fix the St.
Croix and the Highlands which were by the treaty to divide the two
countries. In the far west the line of division was to be drawn
through the Lake of the Woods "to the most northwestern point thereof,
and from thence on a due west course to the River Mississippi"--a
physical impossibility, since the head of the Mississippi, as was
afterwards found, was a hundred miles or so to the south. In later
times this geographical error was corrected, and the curious distortion
of the boundary line that now appears on the maps was necessary at the
Lake of the Woods in order to strike the forty-ninth parallel of north
latitude, which was subsequently arranged as the boundary line as far
as the Rocky Mountains. Of the difficulties that arose from the
eastern boundary line I shall speak later.
From 1778 until 1783 the government of Canada was under the direction
of General Haldimand, who possessed that decision of character
absolutely essential at so critical a period of Canadian history. The
Congress of the States had never despaired of obtaining the assistance
of the French Canadians, and of {290} bringing the country into the new
republic. Haldimand had to arrest Du Calvet, Mesplet, and Jotard, as
leaders in a seditious movement against England. Fleury Mesplet put up
in Montreal the first printing-press, which gave him and his friends
superior facilities for circulating dangerous appeals to the restless
element of the population. Du Calvet was a French Protestant, in
active sympathy with Congress, and had a violent controversy with
Haldimand, who was, at last, forced to take severe measures against
him. While on his way to England he was drowned, and the country
spared more of his dangerous influence. Jotard, a French attorney, was
a contributor to a paper owned by Mesplet, and a warm sympathiser with
the efforts of Admiral D'Estaing and General Lafayette to win back the
allegiance of the French Canadians. The appeals of these two
distinguished men to the memories of the old subjects of France had no
immediate effect except upon a very small class, although it might have
been different had French troops made their appearance on the St.
Lawrence. One Canadian priest, La Valinière, who was connected with
the seminary of St. Sulpice in Montreal, was sent to England with the
approval of the bishop, for his openly expressed sympathy with France.
Happily Monseigneur Briand and the great majority of the clergy stood
always firm on the side of England.
[1] The first paper printed in French Canada was the _Quebec Gazette_,
which appeared in 1764.
{291}
XXI.
COMING OF THE LOYALISTS.
(1783-1791.)
It was during Governor Haldimand's administration that one of the most
important events in the history of Canada occurred as a result of the
American war for independence. This event was the coming to the
provinces of many thousand people, known as United Empire Loyalists,
who, during the progress of the war, but chiefly at its close, left
their old homes in the thirteen colonies. When the Treaty of 1783 was
under consideration, the British representatives made an effort to
obtain some practical consideration from the new nation for the claims
of this unfortunate people who had been subject to so much loss and
obloquy during the war. All that the English envoys could obtain was
the insertion of a clause in the treaty to the effect that Congress
would recommend to the legislatures of the several States measures of
restitution--a provision which turned out, as Franklin intimated at the
time, a perfect nullity. The English Government subsequently {292}
indemnified these people in a measure for their self-sacrifice, and
among other things gave a large number of them valuable tracts of land
in the provinces of British North America. Many of them settled in
Nova Scotia, others founded New Brunswick and Upper Canada, now
Ontario. Their influence on the political fortunes of Canada has been
necessarily very considerable. For years they and their children were
animated by a feeling of bitter animosity against the United States,
the effects of which could be traced in later times when questions of
difference arose between England and her former colonies. They have
proved with the French Canadians a barrier to the growth of any
annexation party, and as powerful an influence in national and social
life as the Puritan element itself in the Eastern and Western States.
Among the sad stories of the past the one which tells of the exile of
the Loyalists from their homes, of their trials and struggles in the
valley of the St. Lawrence, then a wilderness, demands our deepest
sympathy. In the history of this continent it can be only compared
with the melancholy chapter which relates the removal of the French
population from their beloved Acadia. During the Revolution they
comprised a very large, intelligent, and important body of people, in
all the old colonies, especially in New York and at the South, where
they were in the majority until the peace. They were generally known
as Tories, whilst their opponents, who supported independence, were
called Whigs. Neighbour was arrayed against {293} neighbour, families
were divided, the greatest cruelties were inflicted as the war went on
upon men and women who believed it was their duty to be faithful to
king and country. As soon as the contest was ended, their property was
confiscated in several States. Many persons were banished and
prohibited from returning to their homes. An American writer, Sabine,
tells us that previous to the evacuation of New York, in the month of
September, 1783, "upwards of twelve thousand men, women, and children
embarked at the city, at Long and Staten Islands, for Nova Scotia and
the Bahamas." Very wrong impressions were held in those days of the
climate and resources of the provinces to which these people fled.
Time was to prove that the lot of many of the loyalists had actually
fallen in pleasant places, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper
Canada; that the country, where most of them settled, was superior in
many respects to the New England States, and equal to the State of New
York from which so many of them came.
It is estimated that between forty and fifty thousand people reached
British North America by 1786. They commenced to leave their old homes
soon after the breaking out of the war, but the great migration took
place in 1783-84. Many sought the shores of Nova Scotia, and founded
the town of Shelburne, which at one time held a population of ten or
twelve thousand souls, the majority of whom were entirely unsuited to
the conditions of the rough country around them, and soon sought homes
elsewhere. Not a few settled in more favourable parts {294} of Nova
Scotia, and even in Cape Breton. Considerable numbers found rest in
the beautiful valley of the St. John River, and founded the province of
New Brunswick. As many more laid the beginnings of Upper Canada, in
the present county of Glengarry, in the neighbourhood of Kingston and
the Bay of Quinté, on the Niagara River, and near the French
settlements on the Detroit. A few also settled in the country now
known as the Eastern Townships of French Canada. A great proportion of
the men were officers and soldiers of the regiments which were formed
in several colonies out of the large loyal population. Among them were
also men who had occupied positions of influence and responsibility in
their respective communities, divines, judges, officials, and landed
proprietors, whose names were among the best in the old colonies, as
they are certainly in Canada. Many among them gave up valuable estates
which had been acquired by the energy of their ancestors. Unlike the
Puritans who founded New England, they did not take away with them
their valuable property in the shape of money and securities, or
household goods. A rude log hut by the side of a river or lake, where
poverty and wretchedness were their lot for months, and even years in
some cases, was the refuge of thousands, all of whom had enjoyed every
comfort in well-built houses, and not a few even luxury in stately
mansions, some of which have withstood the ravages of time and can
still be pointed out in New England. Many of the loyalists were quite
unfitted for the rude experiences of a pioneer life, and years passed
{295} before they and their children conquered the wilderness and made
a livelihood. The British Government was extremely liberal in its
grants of lands to this class of persons in all the provinces.
The government supplied these pioneers in the majority of cases with
food, clothing, and necessary farming implements. For some years they
suffered many privations; one was called "the year of famine," when
hundreds in Upper Canada had to live on roots, and even the buds of
trees, or anything that might sustain life. Fortunately some lived in
favoured localities, where pigeons and other birds, and fish of all
kinds, were plentiful. In the summer and fall there were quantities of
wild fruit and nuts. Maple sugar was a great luxury, when the people
once learned to make it from the noble tree, whose symmetrical leaf may
well be made the Canadian national emblem. It took the people a long
while to accustom themselves to the conditions of their primitive
pioneer life, but now the results of the labours of these early
settlers and their descendants can be seen far and wide in smiling
fields, richly laden orchards, and gardens of old-fashioned flowers
throughout the country which they first made to blossom like the rose.
The rivers and lakes were the only means of communication in those
early times, roads were unknown, and the wayfarer could find his way
through the illimitable forests only by the help of the "blazed" trees
and the course of streams. Social intercourse was infrequent except in
autumn and winter, when the young managed to assemble as they always
will. Love and courtship went on {296} even in this wilderness, though
marriage was uncertain, as the visits of clergymen were very rare in
many places, and magistrates could alone tie the nuptial knot--a very
unsatisfactory performance to the cooler lovers who loved their church,
its ceremonies and traditions, as dearly as they loved their sovereign.
The story of those days of trial has not yet been adequately written;
perhaps it never will be, for few of those pioneers have left records
behind them. As we wander among the old burying grounds of those
founders of Western Canada and New Brunswick, and stand by the gray,
moss-covered tablets, with names effaced by the ravages of years, the
thought will come to us, what interesting stories could be told by
those who are laid beneath the sod, of sorrows and struggles, of hearts
sick with hope deferred, of expectations never realised, of memories of
misfortune and disaster in another land where they bore so much for a
stubborn and unwise king. Yet these grass-covered mounds are not
simply memorials of suffering and privation; each could tell a story of
fidelity to principle, of forgetfulness of self-interest, of devotion
and self-sacrifice--the grandest story that human annals can tell--a
story that should be ever held up to the admiration and emulation of
the young men and women of the present times, who enjoy the fruits of
the labours of those loyal pioneers.
Although no noble monument has yet been raised to the memory of these
founders of new provinces--of English-speaking Canada; although the
majority lie forgotten in old graveyards where the grass has {297}
grown rank, and common flowers alone nod over their resting-places, yet
the names of all are written in imperishable letters in provincial
annals. Those loyalists, including the children of both sexes, who
joined the cause of Great Britain before the Treaty of Peace in 1783,
were allowed the distinction of having after their name the letters U.
E. to preserve the memory of their fidelity to a United Empire. A
Canadian of these modern days, who traces his descent from such a
source, is as proud of his lineage as if he were a Derby or a Talbot of
Malahide, or inheritor of other noble names famous in the annals of the
English peerage.
The records of all the provinces show the great influence exercised on
their material, political, and intellectual development by this devoted
body of immigrants. For more than a century they and their descendants
have been distinguished for the useful and important part they have
taken in every matter deeply associated with the best interests of the
country. In New Brunswick we find among those who did good service in
their day and generation the names of Wilmot, Allen, Robinson, Jarvis,
Hazen, Burpee, Chandler, Tilley, Fisher, Bliss, Odell, Botsford; in
Nova Scotia, Inglis (the first Anglican bishop in the colonies),
Wentworth, Brenton, Blowers (Chief Justice), Cunard, Cutler, Howe,
Creighton, Chipman, Marshall, Halliburton, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Jones;
in Ontario, Cartwright, Robinson, Hagerman, Stuart (the first Anglican
clergyman), Gamble, Van Alstine, Fisher, Grass, Butler, Macaulay,
Wallbridge, Chrysler, Bethune, {298} Merritt, McNab, Crawford, Kirby,
Tisdale, and Ryerson. Among these names stand out prominently those of
Wilmot, Howe, and Huntingdon, who were among the fathers of responsible
government; those of Tilley, Tupper, Chandler, and Fisher, who were
among the fathers of confederation; of Ryerson, who exercised a most
important influence on the system of free education which Ontario now
enjoys. Among the eminent living descendants of U. E. Loyalists are
Sir Charles Tupper, long a prominent figure in politics; Christopher
Robinson, a distinguished lawyer, who was counsel for Canada at the
Bering Sea arbitration; Sir Richard Cartwright, a liberal leader
remarkable for his keen, incisive style of debate, and his knowledge of
financial questions; Honourable George E. Foster, a former finance
minister of Canada. We might extend the list indefinitely did space
permit. In all walks of life we see the descendants of the loyalists,
exercising a decided influence over the fortunes of the Dominion.
[Illustration: Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)]
Conspicuous among the people who remained faithful to England during
the American revolution, we see the famous Iroquois chief, Joseph
Brant, best known by his Mohawk name of Thayendanegea, who took part in
the war, and was for many years wrongly accused of having participated
in the massacre and destruction of Wyoming, that beauteous vale of the
Susquehanna. It was he whom the poet Campbell would have consigned to
eternal infamy in the verse:
{300}
"The mammoth comes--the foe, the monster, Brandt--
With all his howling, desolating band;
These eyes have seen their blade and burning pine
Awake at once, and silence half your land.
Red is the cup they drink, but not with wine--
Awake and watch to-night, or see no morning shine."
Posterity has, however, recognised the fact that Joseph Brant was not
present at this sad episode of the American war, and the poet in a note
to a later edition admitted that the Indian chief in his poem was "a
pure and declared character of fiction." He was a sincere friend of
English interests, a man of large and statesmanlike views, who might
have taken an important part in colonial affairs had he been educated
in these later times. When the war was ended, he and his tribe moved
into the valley of the St. Lawrence, and received from the government
fine reserves of land on the Bay of Quinté, and on the Grand River in
the western part of the province of Upper Canada, where the prosperous
city and county of Brantford, and the township of Tyendinaga--a
corruption of Thayendanegea--illustrate the fame he has won in Canadian
annals. The descendants of his nation live in comfortable homes, till
fine farms in a beautiful section of Western Canada, and enjoy all the
franchises of white men. It is an interesting fact that the first
church built in Ontario was that of the Mohawks, who still preserve the
communion service presented to the tribe in 1710 by Queen Anne of
England.
General Haldimand's administration will always be noted in Canadian
history for the coming of the {301} loyalists, and for the sympathetic
interest he took in settling these people on the lands of Canada, and
in alleviating their difficulties by all the means in the power of his
government. In these and other matters of Canadian interest he proved
conclusively that he was not the mere military martinet that some
Canadian writers with inadequate information would make him. When he
left Canada he was succeeded by Sir Guy Carleton, then elevated to the
peerage as Lord Dorchester, who was called upon to take part in great
changes in the constitution of Canada which must be left for review in
the following chapter.
{302}
XXII.
FOUNDATION OF NEW PROVINCES--ESTABLISHMENT
OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS.
(1792-1812.)
The history of the Dominion of Canada as a self-governing community
commences with the concession of representative institutions to the old
provinces now comprised within its limits. By 1792 there were provincial
governments established in Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. From 1713 to 1758 the government of
Nova Scotia consisted of a governor, or lieutenant-governor, a council
possessing legislative, executive, and even judicial powers. In October,
1758, an assembly met for the first time in the town of Halifax, which
had been the capital since 1749. New Brunswick had been separated from
Nova Scotia in 1784, but a representative assembly did not assemble until
1786, when its form of government was identical with that of the older
province. Prince Edward Island was a part of Nova Scotia until 1769 when
it was created a distinct province, {303} with a lieutenant-governor, a
combined executive and legislative council, and also an assembly in 1773.
The island of Cape Breton had a lieutenant-governor and executive
council, and remained apart from Nova Scotia until 1820 when it was
included in its government. In 1791 the province of Upper Canada was
formally separated from the province of Quebec by an act of the imperial
parliament, and was called Upper Canada, while the French section
received the name of Lower Canada. At that time the total population of
British North America did not exceed a quarter of a million of souls, of
whom at least a hundred and forty thousand lived on the banks of the St.
Lawrence and its tributary streams, and almost entirely represented the
language, institutions, and history of the French régime. In the French
province there was also a small British population, consisting of
officials, commercial men, and loyalists who settled for the most part in
the Eastern Townships. The population of Upper Canada, about twenty-five
thousand, was almost exclusively of loyalist stock--a considerable number
having migrated thither from the maritime provinces. Beyond the Detroit
River, the limit of English settlement, extended a vast region of
wilderness which was trodden only by trappers and Indians.