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United Empire Loyalists is the name given to individuals who are descendants of British loyalists who, during the American War of Independence, left the 13 rebellious American colonies for the future Canada: the two British colonies of Quebec (including the Eastern Townships and modern-day Ontario) and Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick). The Jay Treaty promised the Loyalists compensation for their lost property although the American Congress essentially refused to "....restore seized property, redress grievances, and permit loyalists to return home to live under the new jurisdiction" (Moore's The Loyalists, page 148).
In the United Kingdom, a Commission for Claims and Losses was established to compensate loyalists if they would relinquish their claims to the British government -- but only about 2000 claims were made. The rest, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 claims, remain unresolved to this day.
Numbers
John Adams and other authorities in the United States have admitted that
when the first shot of the revolution was fired by "the embattled
farmers" of Concord and Lexington, the Loyalists numbered one-third of
the whole population of the colonies, or seven hundred thousand whites.
Others believe that the number was larger, and that the revolutionary
party was in a minority even after the declaration of independence. The
greater number of the Loyalists were to be found in the present state of
New York, where the capital was in possession of the British from
September, 1776, until the evacuation in 1783. They were also the
majority in Pennsylvania and the southern colonies of South Carolina and
Georgia. In all the other states they represented a large minority of
the best class of their respective communities. It is estimated that
there were actually from thirty to thirty-five thousand, at one time or
other, enrolled in regularly organised corps, without including the
bodies which waged guerilla warfare in South Carolina and elsewhere.
Politics
It is only within a decade of years that some historical writers in the
United States have had the courage and honesty to point out the false
impressions long entertained by the majority of Americans with respect
to the Loyalists, who were in their way as worthy of historical eulogy
as the people whose efforts to win independence were crowned with
success. Professor Tyler, of Cornell University, points out that these
people comprised "in general a clear majority of those who, of whatever
grade of culture or of wealth, would now be described as conservative
people." A clear majority of the official class, of men representing
large commercial interests and capital, of professional training and
occupation, clergymen, physicians, lawyers and teachers, "seem to have
been set against the ultimate measures of the revolution". He assumes
with justice that, within this conservative class, one may "usually find
at least a fair portion of the cultivation, of the moral thoughtfulness,
of the personal purity and honour, existing in the community to which
they happen to belong." He agrees with Dr. John Fiske, and other
historical writers of eminence in the United States, in comparing the
Loyalists of 1776 to the Unionists of the southern war of secession from
1861 until 1865. They were "the champions of national unity, as resting
on the paramount authority of the general government." In other words
they were the champions of a United British Empire in the 18th century.
"The old colonial system," says that thoughtful writer Sir J.R. Seeley,
"was not at all tyrannous; and when the breach came the grievances of
which the Americans complained, though perfectly real, were smaller than
ever before or since led to such mighty consequences." The leaders among
the Loyalists, excepting a few rash and angry officials probably,
recognised that there were grievances which ought to be remedied. They
looked on the policy of the party in power in Great Britain as
injudicious in the extreme, but they believed that the relations between
the colonies and the mother-state could be placed on a more satisfactory
basis by a spirit of mutual compromise, and not by such methods as were
insidiously followed by the agitators against England. The Loyalists
generally contended for the legality of the action of parliament, and
were supported by the opinion of all high legal authorities; but the
causes of difficulty were not to be adjusted by mere lawyers, who
adhered to the strict letter of the law, but by statesmen who recognised
that the time had come for reconsidering the relations between the
colonies and the parent state, and meeting the new conditions of their
rapid development and political freedom. These relations were not to be
placed on an equitable and satisfactory basis by mob-violence and
revolution. All the questions at issue were of a constitutional
character, to be settled by constitutional methods.
Unhappily, English statesmen of that day paid no attention to, and had
no conception of, the aspirations, sentiments and conditions of the
colonial peoples when the revolutionary war broke out. The king wished
to govern in the colonies as well as in the British Isles, and
unfortunately the unwise assertion of his arrogant will gave dangerous
men like Samuel Adams, more than once, the opportunity they wanted to
stimulate public irritation and indignation against England.
It is an interesting fact, that the relations between Great Britain and
Canada are now regulated by just such principles as were
urged in the interests of England and her colonies at the time of the American revolution
by Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a great Loyalist, to whom
justice is at last being done by impartial historians in the country
where his motives and acts were so long misunderstood and
misrepresented. "Whatever measures," he wrote to a correspondent in
England, "you may take to maintain the authority of parliament, give me
leave to pray they may be accompanied with a declaration that it is not
the intention of parliament to deprive the colonies of their subordinate
power of legislation, nor to exercise the supreme power except in such
cases and upon such occasions as an equitable regard to the interests of
the whole empire shall make necessary." But it took three-quarters of a
century after the coming of the Loyalists to realise these statesmanlike
conceptions of Hutchinson in the colonial dominions of England to the
north of the dependencies which she lost in the latter part of the
eighteenth century.
Similar opinions were entertained by Joseph Galloway, Jonathan Boucher,
Jonathan Odell, Samuel Seabury, Chief Justice Smith, Judge Thomas Jones,
Beverley Robinson and other men of weight and ability among the
Loyalists, who recognised the short-sightedness and ignorance of the
British authorities, and the existence of real grievances. Galloway, one
of the ablest men on the constitutional side, and a member of the first
continental congress, suggested a practical scheme of imperial
federation, well worthy of earnest consideration at that crisis in
imperial affairs. Eminent men in the congress of 1774 supported this
statesmanlike mode of placing the relations of England and the colonies
on a basis which would enable them to work harmoniously, and at the same
time give full scope to the ambition and the liberties of the colonial
communities thus closely united; but unhappily for the empire the
revolutionary element carried the day. The people at large were never
given an opportunity of considering this wise proposition, and the
motion was erased from the records of congress. In its place, the people
were asked to sign "articles of association" which bound them to cease
all commercial relations with England. Had Galloway's idea been carried
out to a successful issue, we might have now presented to the world the
noble spectacle of an empire greater by half a continent and
seventy-five millions of people.
But while Galloway and other Loyalists failed in their measures of
adjusting existing difficulties and remedying grievances, history can
still do full justice to their wise counsel and resolute loyalty, which
refused to assist in tearing the empire to fragments. These men, who
remained faithful to this ideal to the very bitter end, suffered many
indignities at the hands of the professed lovers of liberty, even in
those days when the questions at issue had not got beyond the stage of
legitimate argument and agitation. The courts of law were closed and the
judges prevented from fulfilling their judicial functions. No class of
persons, not even women, were safe from the insults of intoxicated
ruffians. The clergy of the Church of England were especially the object
of contumely.
During the war the passions of both parties to the controversy were
aroused to the highest pitch, and some allowance must be made for
conditions which were different from those which existed when the
questions at issue were still matters of argument. It is impossible in
times of civil strife to cool the passions of men and prevent them from
perpetrating cruelties and outrages which would be repugnant to their
sense of humanity in moments of calmness and reflection. Both sides,
more than once, displayed a hatred of each other that was worthy of the
American Iroquois themselves. The legislative bodies were fully as
vindictive as individuals in the persecution of the Loyalists.
Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, disqualification for office,
banishment, and even death in case of return from exile, were among the
penalties to which these people were subject by the legislative acts of
the revolutionary party.
If allowance can be made for the feelings of revenge and passion which
animate persons under the abnormal conditions of civil war, no
extenuating circumstances appear at that later period when peace was
proclaimed and congress was called upon to fulfil the terms of the
treaty and recommend to the several independent states the restoration
of the confiscated property of Loyalists. Even persons who had taken up
arms were to have an opportunity of receiving their estates back on
condition of refunding the money which had been paid for them, and
protection was to be afforded to those persons during twelve months
while they were engaged in obtaining the restoration of their property.
It was also solemnly agreed by the sixth article of the treaty that
there should be no future confiscations or prosecutions, and that no
person should "suffer any future loss or damage, either in his person,
liberty or property," for the part he might have taken in the war. Now
was the time for generous terms, such terms as were even shown by the
triumphant North to the rebellious South at the close of the war of
secession. The recommendations of congress were treated with contempt by
the legislatures in all the states except in South Carolina, and even
there the popular feeling was entirely opposed to any favour or justice
being shown to the beaten party. The sixth article of the treaty, a
solemn obligation, was violated with malice and premeditation. The
Loyalists, many of whom had returned from Great Britain with the hope of
receiving back their estates, or of being allowed to remain in the
country, soon found they could expect no generous treatment from the
successful republicans. The favourite Whig occupation of tarring and
feathering was renewed. Loyalists were warned to leave the country as
soon as possible, and in the south some were shot and hanged because
they did not obey the warning. The Loyalists, for the most part, had no
other course open to them than to leave the country they still loved and
where they had hoped to die.
Settlement in Canada
The British government endeavoured, so far as it was in its power, to
compensate the Loyalists for the loss of their property by liberal
grants of money and land, but despite all that was done for them the
majority felt a deep bitterness in their hearts as they landed on new
shores of which they had heard most depressing accounts. More than
thirty-five thousand men, women and children, made their homes within
the limits of the present Dominion. In addition to these actual American
Loyalists, there were several thousands of negroes, fugitives from their
owners, or servants of the exiles, who have been generally counted in
the loose estimates made of the migration of 1783, and the greater
number of whom were at a later time deported from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Of the exiles at least twenty-five thousand went to the maritime
colonies, and built up the province of New Brunswick, where
representative institutions were established in 1784. Of the ten
thousand people who sought the valley of the St Lawrence, some settled
in Montreal, at Chambly, and in parts of the present Eastern Townships,
but the great majority accepted grants of land on the banks of the St.
Lawrence--from River Beaudette, on Lake St. Francis, as far as the
beautiful Bay of Quinte--in the Niagara District, and on the shores of
Lake Erie. The coming of these people, subsequently known by the name of
"U.E. Loyalists"--a name appropriately given to them in recognition of
their fidelity to a United Empire--was a most auspicious event for the
British-American provinces, the greater part of which was still a
wilderness. There was in the
Acadian provinces, afterwards divided into New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, a British population of only some 14,000, mostly confined
to the peninsula. In the valley of the St. Lawrence there was a French
population of probably 100,000 persons, dwelling chiefly on the banks of
the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal. The total British
population of the province of Quebec did not exceed 2000, residing for
the most part in the towns of Quebec and Montreal. No English people
were found west of Lake St. Louis; and what is now the populous province
of Ontario was a mere wilderness, except where loyal refugees had
gathered about the English fort at Niagara, or a few French settlers had
made homes for themselves on the banks of the Detroit River and Lake St.
Clair. The migration of between 30,000 and 40,000 Loyalists to the
maritime provinces and the valley of the St. Lawrence was the saving of
British interests in the great region which England still happily
retained in North America.
The refugees who arrived in Halifax in 1783 were so numerous that
hundreds had to be placed in the churches or in cabooses taken from the
transports and ranged along the streets. At Guysborough, in Nova
Scotia--so named after Sir Guy Carleton--the first village, which was
hastily built by the settlers, was destroyed by a bush fire, and many
persons only saved their lives by rushing into the sea. At Shelburne, on
the first arrival of the exiles, there were seen "lines of women sitting
on the rocky shore and weeping at their altered condition." Towns and
villages, however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people.
At Shelburne, or Port Roseway--anglicised from the French _Razoir_--a
town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some
of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York,
arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to
the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the
Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new
home was quite unsuited for settlement. A beautiful harbour lay in
front, and a rocky country unfit for farmers in the rear of their
ambitious town, which at one time was the most populous in British North
America. In the course of a few years the place was almost deserted, and
sank for a time into insignificance. A pretty town now nestles by the
side of the beautiful and spacious harbour which attracted the first too
hopeful settlers; and its residents point out to the tourist the sites
of the buildings of last century, one or two of which still stand, and
can show many documents and relics of those early days.
Over 12,000 Loyalists, largely drawn from the disbanded loyal
regiments of the old colonies, settled in New Brunswick. The name of
Parrtown was first given, in honour of the governor of Nova Scotia, to
the infant settlement which became the city of St. John, in 1785, when
it was incorporated. The first landing of the loyal pioneers took place
on May 18, 1783, at what is now the Market Slip of this
interesting city. Previous to 1783, the total population of the province
did not exceed seven hundred souls, chiefly at Maugerville and other
places on the great river. The number of Loyalists who settled on the
St. John River was at least ten thousand, of whom the greater proportion
were established at the mouth of the river, which was the base of
operations for the peopling of the new province. Some adventurous
spirits took possession of the abandoned French settlements at Grimross
and St. Anne's, where they repaired some ruined huts of the original
Acadian occupants, or built temporary cabins. This was the beginning of
the settlement of Fredericton, which four years later became the
political capital on account of its central position, its greater
security in time of war, and its location on the land route to Quebec.
Many of the people spent their first winter in log-huts, bark camps, and
tents covered with spruce, or rendered habitable only by the heavy banks
of snow which were piled against them. A number of persons died through
exposure, and "strong, proud men"--to quote the words of one who lived
in those sorrowful days--"wept like children and lay down in their
snow-bound tents to die."
A small number of loyal refugees had found their way to the valley of
the St. Lawrence as early as 1778, and obtained employment in the
regiments organised under Sir John Johnson and others. It was not until
1783 and 1784 that the large proportion of the exiles came to Western
Canada. They settled chiefly on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence,
in what are now the counties of Glengarry, Stormont, Dundas, Grenville,
Leeds, Frontenac, Addington, Lennox, Hastings and Prince Edward, where
their descendants have acquired wealth and positions of honour and
trust. The first township laid out in Upper Canada, now Ontario, was
Kingston. The beautiful Bay of Quinté is surrounded by a country full of
the memories of this people, and the same is true of the picturesque
district of Niagara.
Among the Loyalists of Canada must also be honourably mentioned Joseph Brant
(Thayendanega), the astute and courageous chief of the Mohawks,
the bravest nation of the Iroquois confederacy, who fought on the side
of England during the war. At its close he and his people settled in
Canada, where they received large grants from the government, some in a
township by the Bay of Quinté, which still bears the Indian title of the
great warrior, and the majority on the Grand River, where a beautiful
city and county perpetuate the memory of this loyal subject of the
British crown. The first Anglican church built in Upper Canada was that
of the Mohawks, near Brantford, and here the church bell first broke the
silence of the illimitable forest.
The difficulties which the Upper Canadian immigrants had to undergo
before reaching their destination were much greater than was the case
with the people who went direct in ships from American ports to Halifax
and other places on the Atlantic coast. The former had to make toilsome
journeys by land, or by bateaux and canoes up the St. Lawrence, the
Richelieu, the Genesee, and other streams which gave access from the
interior of the United States to the new Canadian land. The British
government did its best to supply the wants of the population suddenly
thrown upon its charitable care, but, despite all that could be done for
them in the way of food and means of fighting the wilderness, they
suffered naturally a great deal of hardship. The most influential
immigration found its way to the maritime provinces, where many received
congenial employment and adequate salaries in the new government of New
Brunswick. Many others, with the wrecks of their fortunes or the
pecuniary aid granted them by the British government, were able to make
comfortable homes and cultivate estates in the valleys of the St. John
and Annapolis, and in other fertile parts of the lower provinces. Of the
large population that founded Shelburne a few returned to the United
States, but the greater number scattered all over the provinces. The
settlers in Upper Canada had to suffer many trials for years after their
arrival, and especially in a year of famine, when large numbers had to
depend on wild fruits and roots. Indeed, had it not been for the fish
and game which were found in some, but not in all, places, starvation
and death would have been the lot of many hundreds of helpless people.
Many of the refugees could trace their descent to the early immigration
that founded the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Some were
connected with the Cavalier and Church families of Virginia. Others were
of the blood of persecuted Huguenots and German Protestants from the
Rhenish or Lower Palatinate. Not a few were Highland Scotchmen, who had
been followers of the Stuarts, and yet fought for King George and the
British connection during the American revolution. Among the number were
notable Anglican clergymen, eminent judges and lawyers, and probably one
hundred graduates of Harvard, Yale, King's, Pennsylvania, and William
and Mary Colleges. In the records of industrial enterprise, of social
and intellectual progress, of political development for a hundred
years, we find the names of many eminent men, sprung from these people,
to whom Canada owes a deep debt of gratitude for the services they
rendered her in the most critical period of her chequered history.
Further reading
- Christopher Moore; "The Loyalists: Revolution, Exile, Settlement"; 1984, ISBN 0771060939.
- W. Stewart Wallace; "The United Empire Loyalists: A Chronicle of the Great Migration"; Volume 13 of the "Chronicles of Canada", (32 volumes ); 1914, Toronto.
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