A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Shortt and Doughty, p. 195.

[59] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 196-9.

[60] Ib., pp. 205-7.

[61] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 227-8.

[62] Shortt and Doughty, p. 196.

[63] See above, p. 67 note.

[64] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 208-10.

[65] Letter to Shelburne, December 24, 1767, Shortt and Doughty, p. 203.

[66] Shortt and Doughty, p. 454. See also note to p. 377. Carleton had a much better opinion than most people of the administration of justice under the old French régime. In his examination before the House of Commons on the Quebec Bill, he was asked, ‘Do you know from the Canadians themselves, what sort of administration of justice prevailed under the French Government, whether pure or corrupt?’ His answer was, ‘Very pure in general. I never heard complaints of the administration of justice under the French Government.’ Egerton and Grant, pp. 56-7.

[67] See above, p. 79.

[68] Shortt and Doughty, p. 295.

[69] In 1775 the population of the whole of Canada was according to Bouchette’s estimate 90,000 (see the Census of Canada, 1870-1, vol. iv, Statistics of Canada). On the other hand Carleton, in his evidence given before the House of Commons at the time when the Quebec Act was being passed in 1774, estimated the number of the ‘new subjects’ at ‘about 150,000 souls all Roman Catholics’ as against less than 400 Protestants, excluding in the latter case women and children. Egerton and Grant, pp. 51-2.

[70] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 410-11.

[71] Referred to by Carleton as ‘The Suffolk County Resolves in the Massachusetts’. Shortt and Doughty, p. 413.

[72] Carleton, however, after the war broke out, sternly repressed any attempt of the Indians to act except under close supervision of white officers. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on Joseph Brant in the American Revolution, April 3, 1897. Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, p. 243, &c.

[73] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 412-14.

[74] See above, p. 67.

[75] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 450-2.

[76] See the letter and the note to it at p. 451 of Shortt and Doughty. Sir William Johnson had died in July, 1774; his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, had acted as his deputy for Indian affairs, and continued to do so for a while after his death, but in 1775 Major John Campbell was appointed Superintendent of Indian affairs.

[77] The reference is to the raising of a body of 300 Canadians in 1764 for service under Bradstreet in Pontiac’s war. See above p. 24. It seems doubtful whether the complaint to which Carleton refers had any foundation. See Kingsford, vol. v, p. 76.

[78] Carleton’s account of the above, given in a letter to Dartmouth, dated Montreal, June 7, 1775, is that on May 19 he received news from Gage of the outbreak of hostilities, i.e. the fight at Lexington, coupled with a request that he would ‘send the 7th Regiment with some companies of Canadians and Indians to Crown Point, in order to make a diversion and favour his (Gage’s) operations’. The next morning news reached Quebec ‘that one, Benedict Arnold, said to be a native of Connecticut, and a horse jockey, landed a considerable number of armed men at St. John’s: distant from this town (Montreal) eight leagues, about eight in the morning of the 18th, surprised the detachment of the 26th doing duty there, consisting of a sergeant and ten men, and made them prisoners, seized upon the King’s sloop, batteaus, and every other military store, and a few hours after departed, carrying off the craft, prisoners, and stores they had seized. From this party we had the first information of the rebels being in arms upon the lakes, and of their having, under the command of said Arnold, surprised Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the detachment of the 26th doing duty at these two places, and all the craft employed upon those lakes’.... ‘The same evening another express brought an account of the rebels having landed at St. John’s a second time, in the night, between the 18th and 19th.’ Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.

[79] This seems to have been an under-estimate. There were apparently at the time three British regiments in Canada, the 7th, the 8th, and the 26th.

[80] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.

[81] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 456-9.

[82] Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from a military point of view, in regard to the other North American colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775, he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate, though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457.

[83] ‘A few of the gentry, consisting principally of the youth, residing in this place (Montreal) and its neighbourhood, formed a small corps of volunteers under the command of Mr. Samuel Mackay, and took post at St. John’s.’ (Letter from Carleton to Dartmouth as above. Shortt and Doughty, p. 454.)

[84] Shortt and Doughty, p. 459.

[85] This may probably have been the Major Preston referred to in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, December 27, 1775. ‘Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s, that Major Preston, one of two, but he is not sure which, would have been an excellent commander some months since, if he had seen any service.’

This and other quotations from Horace Walpole’s letters are taken from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904.

[86] The general view seems to have been that Chambly might have held out longer, and that the commander, Major Stopford, was shielded by his aristocratic connexions, but the Annual Register for 1776 (p. 5) says that it ‘was in no very defensible condition’, and Carleton seems to have found no fault with its surrender. See the entry on p. 110 of Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2201, 1904, Historical MS. Commission, Report on American manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, vol. i. Sir Guy Carleton to (Lord Barrington), May 21, 1777, ‘has nothing to charge either the garrison of Chamblee or St. John’s with.’

[87] The Annual Register for 1776, p. 12, makes Montgomery’s advance from Montreal to Quebec a kind of repetition of Arnold’s march. ‘Their march was in winter, through bad roads, in a severe climate, beneath the fall of the first snows, and therefore made under great hardships.’ He seems, on the contrary, to have come down the river in the captured British vessels.

[88] There is or was a dispute about the date. Kingsford makes it the night of December 31 to January 1, but there seems no doubt that the attack took place on the previous night, that of December 30-1. See Sir James Le Moyne’s Paper on the Assault on Quebec in 1775, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, 1899.

[89] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 5, 1776.

[90] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, August 11, 1776. It is not clear why Horace Walpole thought poorly of Carleton’s writing. His dispatches are as clear and straightforward as could be wished.

[91] Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 22, 1776.

[92] p. 15.

[93] Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxix, p. 379. Debate of May 6, 1791.

[94] Annual Register as above.

[95] The letter, in which Montgomery complained of personal ill-treatment of himself by Carleton, concluded—‘Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done in Montreal and in the river; if you do, by Heavens there will be no mercy shown.’

[96] Annual Register for 1776; State Papers, p. 255. Carleton’s kindness to the American prisoners was so great that when some of them returned on parole, they were not allowed to communicate with the American troops serving at Crown Point for fear that they might cause disaffection. See Stone’s Life of Brant (1838), vol. i, p. 165.

[97] There is an interesting account of the incident at the Cedars in Stone’s Life of Brant (1838 ed.), vol. i, p. 153, &c. Stone says that Forster had with him one company of regulars and nearly 600 Indians, led by Joseph Brant, the celebrated Mohawk chief. But in spite of the note to p. 151 there seems no doubt that Brant, who had gone to England on a visit in the previous autumn, did not start on his return voyage till late in May or June, and did not arrive at New York till July, long after the event at the Cedars. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, April, 1897, Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, pp. 243, &c., Colonel Cruikshank says that Brant sailed from Falmouth early in June, 1776, and reached New York on July 29, where he fought under Howe. Probably the affair of the Cedars was confounded with the fighting at St. John’s and the attack on Montreal when Ethan Allen was taken prisoner in 1775. Brant seems to have been present in these actions.

[98] See the letter of Ebenezer Sullivan abstracted in the 1890 Report on Canadian Archives, State Papers, p. 78.

[99] Ibid. p. 74.

[100] Annual Register for 1777, p. 2.

[101] See Carleton’s letter to Germain of September 28, 1776, quoting Germain’s of June 21, 1776. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 459-60.

[102] The letter is quoted in extenso at pp. 129-32 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada.

[103] History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii, 1882 ed., chap. xii, p. 447.

[104] Clinton was named to act instead of Sir William Howe, in the event of his succeeding Howe in command of the army; this contingency happened, and he, and not Howe, acted as commissioner. Under the Act any three of the five commissioners were empowered to treat with the Americans.

[105] Howe was a pronounced Whig. Burgoyne was more or less neutral until his later years, when he threw in his lot with Fox and his friends. Clinton belonged to a Whig family, but seems to have been a supporter of the Ministry; Cornwallis had voted with Lord Camden against taxing the colonists.

[106] Influence of Sea Power on History, chap. ix, pp. 342-3.

[107] See above, pp. 90-1.

[108] It is given in Lord E. Fitzmaurice’s Life of Lord Shelburne.

[109] p. 20.

[110] As to Lady Betty Germain’s bequest of Drayton to Lord George Sackville, see the letter from Lord Vere to Earl Temple of December 19, 1769, in the Grenville Papers (edited by W. J. Smith, 1853, John Murray), vol. iv, p. 491. See also various references in Horace Walpole’s Letters (Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904). In a letter to George Montagu, July 23, 1763, Walpole gives a description of Drayton, and refers to Lady Betty Germain as ‘its divine old mistress’. Drayton belonged to the Earls of Peterborough, the Mordaunt family. The daughter and heiress of the last earl married Sir John Germain, and left him the property. He married, as his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, the Lady Betty Germain in question, and left Drayton to her, expressing a wish that if she had no children, she should leave it to one of the Sackvilles, which she accordingly did. Lady Betty Germain, whose father was Viceroy of Ireland, was a friend of Swift.

[111] Letter to Sir H. Mann, February 20, 1764. The other four were Pitt (Lord Chatham), Charles Townshend, Conway, and Charles Yorke.

[112] ‘I think nobody can doubt of Lord George’s resolution since he has exposed himself to the artillery of the whole town. Indeed I always believed him brave and that he sacrificed himself to sacrifice Prince Ferdinand.’ Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, November 23, 1775. The letter was written just as Germain was about to take office.

[113] To the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway and the Countess of Ailesbury, January 15, 1775.

[114] Quoted by Horace Walpole in his letter to Sir Horace Mann of March 5, 1777.

[115] Carleton’s letter was dated May 20, 1777. It is quoted in full at p. 129 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada, as well as in the Report on the Canadian Archives for 1885.

[116] One reason alleged is that Carleton had given evidence against Germain at the latter’s court-martial.

[117] This letter, with Carleton’s letter of May 20, 1777, will be found in Mr. Brymner’s Report on the Canadian Archives for 1885, pp. cxxxii-vii, Note D.

[118] The note to p. 474 of Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada (Shortt and Doughty) condemns Carleton’s conduct to Germain.

[119] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, p. 458.

[120] Quoted in full at pp. 457-9 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada.

[121] October 15, 1777. See Canadian Archives Report for 1890, p. 101. It is not absolutely clear that the reference is to Livius.

[122] The records as to the dates of Livius’ appointment are somewhat confusing. There is a printed pamphlet in the Colonial Office Library giving Livius’ petition and the proceedings which followed in England. It is dated 1779, and entitled ‘Proceedings between Sir Guy Carleton, K.B., late Governor of the Province of Quebec, and Peter Livius Esq., Chief Justice of the said Province, &c. &c.’. The note to p. 476 of Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada (Shortt and Doughty) is favourable to Livius and unfavourable to Carleton.

[123] See also below, p. 238.

[124] One cause which reduced their numbers was that in the seventeenth century the Jesuits converted a considerable number of Mohawks and induced them to settle in Canada. They were known as the Caghnawagas.

[125] As regards the Six Nation Indians, Joseph Brant, and the Border forays in the War of Independence, see Stone’s Life of Brant, and two papers by Lt.-Col. Ernest Cruikshank, on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, in the Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, 1898, p. 243, and vol. vii, 1904, p. 391. The papers were read in April, 1897, and April, 1902. See also The Old New York Frontier, by F. W. Halsey. Scribners, New York, 1902.

[126] On Pownall’s map of 1776 is marked at the spot ‘The great portage one mile’, but the distance between the two rivers was rather greater.

[127] St. Leger’s dispatch to Burgoyne, dated Oswego, August 27, 1777, and written after his retreat, forms Appendix No. XIII to A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne. London, 1780.

[128] St. Leger reported it to be twelve miles distant.

[129] St. Leger says definitely, ‘Sir John Johnson put himself at the head of this party.’ Stone, on the other hand, makes out that Sir John Johnson remained behind in the camp and was at that part of it which was surprised by Willett (See Stone’s Life of Brant, 1838 ed., vol. i, p. 235, note). St. Leger says that he ‘could not send above 80 white men, Rangers and troops included, with the whole corps of Indians’, but all the accounts seem to agree in placing the number of Indians at 400 and no more.

[130] The details of the fighting at Oriskany, and Willett’s sortie from the fort, are more confusing and contradictory even than those of most battles and sieges. The American accounts make Oriskany an American victory, and Willett’s sortie a taking possession of the whole British camp, the contents of which, after the defenders had been put to flight, were carried off to the fort in seven wagons which made three trips between the fort and the camp. St. Leger, no doubt minimizing what happened, reported that the sortie resulted in no ‘further advantage than frightening some squaws and pilfering the packs of the warriors which they left behind them’. From the contemporary plan of the operations at Fort Stanwix it seems clear that Willett surprised only the post at the lower landing-place and not the whole British camp.

[131] See above pp. 96-7 and note.

[132] Junius to the Duke of Grafton, December 12, 1769.

[133] Walpole to the Honourable Henry Synan Conway, November 12, 1774.

[134] Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, June 14, 1787. See also letter to the same, January 16, 1786. ‘General Burgoyne’s Heiress, I hear, succeeded extremely well, and was besides excellently acted.’

[135] Letter to the Rev. William Mason, October 5, 1777. In this letter Horace Walpole, apparently without real ground, says that Burgoyne was the natural son of Lord Bingley.

[136] Letters of August 8, August 11, and August 24, 1777.

[137] Not to be confounded with the Wood Creek mentioned above, p. 147, &c., which was a feeder of Lake Oneida.

[138] Letter to Sir H. Mann, September 1, 1777.

[139] See State Papers, p. 97, in Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1890.

[140] State of the Expedition from Canada Narrative, p. 12.

[141] Kingsford makes the number to have been 746: History of Canada, vol. vi, p. 216, note.

[142] From Burgoyne’s dispatch it appears that Baum was beginning a further advance when the attack was made. His words are, ‘Colonel Baum was induced to proceed without sufficient knowledge of the ground.’

[143] The American accounts put the British casualties at nearly 1,000.

[144] It may probably have been to the disaster at Bennington that Horace Walpole referred when he wrote to the Countess of Upper Ossory on September 29, 1777: ‘General Burgoyne has had but bad sport in the woods.’

[145] Benjamin Lincoln was the American commander charged with the duty of attacking Burgoyne’s communications. He was afterwards in command at Charleston when it was taken by the English in May, 1780.

[146] It is not easy to make out the details of the fighting. After the battle of September 19, the two armies were said to be only about half a mile distant from each other, but on October 7, according to Burgoyne’s dispatch, after advancing for some time he formed his troops within three-quarters of a mile of the enemy. The advance was apparently not direct but diagonal against the extreme left of the Americans. The main English camp near the river, where there was a bridge of boats, does not seem to have been at all molested, though it was presumably drawn back in the following night. Breyman’s camp which was stormed is shown on the plan appended to the State of the Expedition from Canada, as well in the rear of the extreme right of the English line.

[147] Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Upper Ossory on November 3, 1777, seems to be referring to reports of the battle at Freeman’s Farm. ‘If your angel would be seeing, why did he not put on his spectacles and hover over Arnold, who has beaten the vapouring Burgoyne and destroyed his magazines? Carleton, who was set aside for General Hurlothrumbo, is gone to save him and the remains of his army if he can.’ On November 13 he writes to the same, ‘General Swagger is said to be entrenched at Saratoga, but I question whether he will be left at leisure to continue his Commentaries: one Arnold is mighty apt to interrupt him.’ Authentic news of Burgoyne’s surrender did not reach England till December 1. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on December 4, Walpole says: ‘On Tuesday night came news from Carleton at Quebec, which indeed had come from France earlier, announcing the total annihilation (as to America) of Burgoyne’s army.... Burgoyne is said to be wounded in three places, his vanquisher, Arnold, is supposed to be dead of his wounds.’ It will be noted that Arnold is made the hero on the American side, and that there is no mention of Walpole’s godson, Gates. Walpole contemplated invasion of Canada and possible loss of Quebec as the result of the disaster.

[148] The above account has been taken almost entirely from the original dispatches, documents, and evidence published in A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne. London, 1780. Burgoyne, in a private letter to Howe of 20th October, attributed the surrender in part to the fact that his troops were not all British. See Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution (1904), vol. i, p. 140.

[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown of Great Britain.’ (Annual Register, 1778, p. 341.)

[150] Stone’s Life of Brant, and among recent books, Halsey’s Old New York Frontier, give good accounts of this border war from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities, not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in Gertrude of Wyoming made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one of the monsters of the story.

The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut, though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded.

On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’, published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming Connecticut.’

In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania; that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time) to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr. Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’

The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.

[151] This is the date given on p. 10 of Sir Frederick Haldimand, by Jean N. McIlwraith in the ‘Makers of Canada’ series. The notice in the Dictionary of National Biography gives the date as 1756. The life states that Haldimand as a young man possibly took service with the King of Sardinia, and certainly served under Frederick the Great. The Dictionary of National Biography states that there is no record of his having been in the Prussian army.

[152] For Du Calvet’s case see Mr. Brymner’s Introduction to the Report on Canadian Archives, 1888, p. xv, &c., and also Note D. This valuable Introduction and the equally valuable Introduction to the 1887 volume should be consulted for an estimate of Haldimand and his administration, the Haldimand papers being catalogued in these volumes.

[153] Shortt and Doughty, p. 497.

[154] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488.

[155] Ibid., p. 498.

[156] Ibid., p. 486. See also above, p. 92.

[157] 24 Geo. III, cap. 1, see Shortt and Doughty, pp. 499, 501 and notes. See also above, p. 88, note.

[158] Shortt and Doughty, p. 486. ‘The session’ must have been a later session than that of 1775, as Livius was not in the Council in that year. See above, p. 141.

[159] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 476-7 and notes, also 487, 488-9 and notes.

[160] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488. It will be remembered that Livius was not in Canada at this time.

[161] See above, p. 134.

[162] See above, p. 182.

[163] Preface to Annual Register for 1782.

[164] Horace Walpole to the Rev. William Mason, April 25, 1781.

CHAPTER IV
THE TREATY OF 1783 AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS

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 The Treaty of 1783. 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.’

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.

In 1783 the geography of North America was little known.

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 The disputes were between provinces as well as nations. 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.

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.

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.

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 Canada was not one nation. 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.

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 Provisions in the 1783 treaty which referred to the Loyalists. 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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Debates in Parliament on the question of the Loyalists.

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 The debate in the House of Lords. 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.

Meanwhile the House of Commons were also engaged in discussing the Peace, and here Lord John Cavendish The Debate in the House of Commons. 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 The Government defeated. 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.

But the House of Commons had not yet done with the Peace, or with the ministry. Four days later, on Resolutions by Lord John Cavendish. 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 Shelburne’s ministry defeated. 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.

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.

Excuses made for the policy of the British Government with regard to the Loyalists.

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 Persecution of the Loyalists in the various states. 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.

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.

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 The Loyalist soldiers. 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]

Numbers, with places, and destinations of the Loyalists.

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 New York the principal Loyalist state. 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.

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, The Loyalists in Canada. 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.

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, Loyalist colonization of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 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.

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 Loyalist colonization of the province of Ontario. 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.

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 The United Empire Loyalists. 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.

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.

Reasons for the persecution of the Loyalists.

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 The American War of Independence as contrasted with the later war between the North and the South. 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.

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]

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]

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 Loyalty of the Six Nation Indians and their settlement in Canada. 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.