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 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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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 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]