A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

The number of claimants who applied for money compensation was 5,072: 954 claims were withdrawn or not prosecuted, and the number of claims examined was 4,118.[171] The very large majority of the Loyalists therefore did not participate in the grant, but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.