fortune. George Grenville, who was responsible for the rigid enforcement of the navigation laws and the stamp act, had none of that worldly wisdom which Sir Robert Walpole showed when, years before, it was proposed to him to tax the colonies. “No,” said that astute politician, “I have old England set against me already, and do you think I will have New England likewise?” But Grenville and his successors, in attempting to carry out a new colonial policy, entirely misunderstood the conditions and feelings of the colonial communities affected and raised a storm of indignation which eventually led to independence. The stamp act was in itself an equitable measure, the proceeds of which were to be exclusively used for the benefit of the colonies themselves; but its enactment was most unfortunate at a time when the influential classes in New England were deeply irritated at the enforcement of a policy which was to stop the illicit trade from which they had so largely profited in the past. The popular indignation, however, vented itself against the stamp act, which imposed internal taxation, was declared to be in direct violation of the principles of political liberty and self-government long enjoyed by the colonists as British subjects, and was repealed as a result of the violent opposition it met in the colonies. Parliament contented itself with a statutory declaration of its supremacy in all matters over every part of the empire; but not long afterwards the determination of some English statesmen to bring the colonies as far as practicable directly under the dominion of British law in all matters of commerce and taxation, and to control their government as far as possible, found full expression in the Townshend acts of 1767 which imposed port duties on a few commodities, including tea, imported into those countries. At the same time provision was made for the due execution of existing laws relating to trade. The province of New York was punished for openly refusing to obey an act of parliament which required the authorities to furnish the British troops with the necessaries of life. Writs of assistance, which allowed officials to search everywhere for smuggled goods, were duly legalised. These writs were the logical sequence of a rigid enforcement of the laws of trade and navigation, and had been vehemently denounced by James Otis, so far back as 1761, as not only irreconcilable with the colonial charters, but as inconsistent with those natural rights which a people “derived from nature and the Author of nature”–an assertion which obtained great prominence for the speaker. This bold expression of opinion in Massachusetts should be studied by the historian of those times in connection with the equally emphatic revolutionary argument advanced by Patrick Henry of Virginia, two years later, against the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Anglican clergy and the right of the king to veto legislation of the colony. Though the prerogative of the crown was thus directly called into question in a Virginia court, the British government did not take a determined stand on the undoubted rights of the crown in the case. English statesmen and lawyers probably regarded such arguments, if they paid any attention to them at all in days when they neglected colonial opinion, as only temporary ebullitions of local feeling, though in reality they were so many evidences of the opposition that was sure to show itself whenever there was a direct interference with the privileges and rights of self-governing communities. Both Henry and Otis touched a key-note of the revolution, which was stimulated by the revenue and stamp acts and later measures affecting the colonies.
It is somewhat remarkable that it was in aristocratic Virginia, founded by Cavaliers, as well as in democratic Massachusetts, founded by Puritans, that the revolutionary element gained its principal strength during the controversy with the parent state. The makers of Massachusetts were independents in church government and democrats in political principle. The whole history of New England, in fact, from the first charters until the argument on the writs of assistance, is full of incidents which show the growth of republican ideas. The Anglican church had no strength in the northern colonies, and the great majority of their people were bitterly opposed to the pretensions of the English hierarchy to establish an episcopate in America. It is not therefore surprising that Massachusetts should have been the leader in the revolutionary agitation; on the other hand in Virginia the Anglican clergy belonged to what was essentially an established church, and the whole social fabric of the colony rested on an aristocratic basis. No doubt before the outbreak of the revolution there was a decided feeling against England on account of the restrictions on the sale of tobacco; and the quarrel, which I have just referred to, with respect to the stipends of the clergy, which were to be paid in this staple commodity according to its market value at the time of payment, had spread discontent among a large body of the people. But above all such causes of dissatisfaction was the growing belief that the political freedom of the people, and the very existence of the colony as a self-governing community, were jeopardised by the indiscreet acts of the imperial authorities after 1763. It is easy then to understand that the action of the British government in 1767 renewed the agitation, which had been allayed for the moment by the repeal of the stamp act and the general belief that there would be no rigid enforcement of old regulations which meant the ruin of the most profitable trade of New England. The measures of the ministry were violently assailed in parliament by Burke and other eminent men who availed themselves of so excellent an opportunity of exciting the public mind against a government which was doing so much to irritate the colonies and injure British trade. All the political conditions were unfavourable to a satisfactory adjustment of the colonial difficulty. Chatham had been one of the earnest opponents of the stamp act, but he was now buried in retirement–labouring under some mental trouble–and Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer in the cabinet of which Chatham was the real head, was responsible for measures which his chief would have repudiated as most impolitic and inexpedient in the existing temper of the colonies.
The action of the ministry was for years at once weak and irritating. One day they asserted the supremacy of the British parliament, and on the next yielded to the violent opposition of the colonies and the appeals of British merchants whose interests were at stake. Nothing remained eventually but the tea duty, and even that was so arranged that the colonists could buy their tea at a much cheaper rate than the British consumer. But by this time a strong anti-British party was in course of formation throughout the colonies. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia, and a few other political managers of consummate ability, had learned their own power, and the weakness of English ministers. Samuel Adams, who had no love in his heart for England, was undoubtedly by this time insidiously working towards the independence of the colonies. Violence and outrage formed part of his secret policy. The tea in Boston harbour was destroyed by a mob disguised as Mohawk Indians, and was nowhere allowed to enter into domestic consumption. The patience of English ministers was now exhausted, and they determined to enter on a vigorous system of repression, which might have had some effect at an earlier stage of the revolutionary movement, when the large and influential loyal body of people in the colonies ought to have been vigorously supported, and not left exposed to the threats, insults, and even violence of a resolute minority, comprising many persons influenced by purely selfish reasons–the stoppage of illicit trade from which they had profited–as well as men who objected on principle to a policy which seemed to them irreconcilable with the rights of the people to the fullest possible measure of local self-government. As it was, however, the insults and injuries to British officials bound to obey the law, the shameless and continuous rioting, the destruction of private property, the defiant attitude of the opposition to England, had at last awakened the home authorities to the dangers latent in the rebellious spirit that reckless agitators had aroused in colonies for which England had sacrificed so much of her blood and treasure when their integrity and dearest interests were threatened by France. The port of Boston, where the agitators were most influential and the most discreditable acts of violence had taken place, was closed to trade; and important modifications were made in the charter granted to Massachusetts by William III in 1692. Another obnoxious act provided that persons “questioned for any acts in execution of the laws” should be tried in England–a measure intended to protect officials and soldiers in the discharge of their duty against the rancour of the colonial community where they might be at that time. These measures, undoubtedly unwise at this juncture, were calculated to evoke the hostility of the other colonies and to show them what was probably in store for themselves. But while the issue certainly proved this to be the case, the course pursued by the government under existing conditions had an appearance of justification. Even Professor Goldwin Smith, who will not be accused of any sympathy with the British cabinet of that day, or of antagonism to liberal principles, admits that “a government thus bearded and insulted had its choice between abdication and repression,” and “that repression was the most natural” course to pursue under the circumstances. Lord North gave expression to what was then a largely prevailing sentiment in England when he said “to repeal the tea duty would stamp us with timidity,” and that the destruction of the property of private individuals, such as took place at Boston, “was a fitting culmination of years of riot and lawlessness.” Lord North, we all know now, was really desirous of bringing about a reconciliation between the colonies and the parent state, but he servilely yielded his convictions to the king, who was determined to govern all parts of his empire, and was in favour of coercive measures. It is quite evident that the British ministry and their supporters entirely underrated the strength of the colonial party that was opposing England. Even those persons who, when the war broke out, remained faithful to their allegiance to the crown, were of opinion that the British government was pursuing a policy unwise in the extreme, although they had no doubt of the abstract legal right of that government to pass the Grenville and Townshend acts for taxing the colonies. Chatham, Burke, Conway, and Barre were the most prominent public men who, in powerful language, showed the dangers of the unwise course pursued by the “king’s friends” in parliament.
As we review the events of those miserable years we can see that every step taken by the British government, from the stamp act until the closing of the port of Boston and other coercive measures, had the effect of strengthening the hands of Samuel Adams and the other revolutionary agitators. Their measures to create a feeling against England exhibited great cunning and skill. The revolutionary movement was aided by the formation of “Sons of Liberty”–a phrase taken from one of Barre’s speeches,–by circular letters and committees of correspondence between the colonies, by petitions to the king winch were framed in a tone of independence not calculated to conciliate that uncompromising sovereign, by clever ingenious appeals to public patriotism, by the assembling of a “continental congress,” by acts of “association” which meant the stoppage of all commercial intercourse with Great Britain. New England was the head and front of the whole revolution, and Samuel Adams was its animating spirit. Even those famous committees of correspondence between the towns of Massachusetts, which gave expression to public opinion and stimulated united action when the legislative authority was prevented by the royal governor from working, were the inspiration of this astute political manager. Prominent Virginians saw the importance of carrying out this idea on a wider field of action, and Virginia accordingly inaugurated a system of intercolonial correspondence which led to the meeting of a continental congress, and was the first practical step towards political independence of the parent state. Adams’s decision to work for independence was made, or confirmed, as early as 1767, when Charles Townshend succeeded in passing the measures which were so obnoxious to the colonists, and finally led to civil war.
At a most critical moment, when the feelings of a large body of people were aroused to a violent pitch, when ideas of independence were ripening in the minds of others besides Samuel Adams, General Gage, then in command of the British regular troops in Boston, sent a military force to make prisoners of Adams and Hancock at Lexington, and seize some stores at Concord. Then the “embattled farmers” fired the shot “which was heard around the world.” Then followed the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the battle of Bunker’s Hill, on the same day that Washington was appointed by congress to command the continental army. At this critical juncture, John Adams and other prominent colonists–not excepting Washington–were actually disavowing all desire to sever their relations with the parent state in the face of the warlike attitude of congress–an attitude justified by the declaration that it was intended to force a redress of grievances. Tom Paine, a mere adventurer, who had not been long in the country, now issued his pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which was conceived in a spirit and written in a style admirably calculated to give strength and cohesion to the arguments of the people, who had been for some time coming to the conclusion that to aim at independence was the only consistent and logical course in the actual state of controversy between England and the colonies. On March 14th, 1776, the town of Boston, then the most important in America, was given up to the rebels; and British ships carried the first large body of unhappy and disappointed Loyalists to Halifax. On July the fourth of the same year the Declaration of Independence was passed, after much hesitation and discussion, and published to the world by the continental congress assembled at Philadelphia. The signal victory won by the continental army over Burgoyne at Saratoga in the autumn of the following year led to an alliance with France, without whose effective aid the eventual success of the revolutionists would have been very doubtful The revolutionists won their final triumph at Yorktown in the autumn of 1781, when a small army of regulars and Loyalists, led by Cornwallis, was obliged to surrender to the superior American and French forces, commanded by Washington and Rochambeau, and supported by a French fleet which effectively controlled the approaches to Chesapeake Bay.
The conduct of the war on the part of England was noted for the singular incapacity of her generals. Had there been one of any energy or ability at the head of her troops, when hostilities commenced, the undisciplined American army might easily have been beaten and annihilated Boston need never have been evacuated had Howe taken the most ordinary precautions to occupy the heights of Dorchester that commanded the town. Washington could never have organised an army had not Howe given him every possible opportunity for months to do so. The British probably had another grand opportunity of ending the war on their occupation of New York, when Washington and his relatively insignificant army were virtually in their power while in retreat. The history of the war is full of similar instances of lost opportunities to overwhelm the continental troops. All the efforts of the British generals appear to have been devoted to the occupation of the important towns in a country stretching for a thousand miles from north to south, instead of following and crushing the constantly retreating, diminishing, and discouraged forces of the revolutionists. The evacuation of Philadelphia at a critical moment of the war was another signal illustration of the absence of all military foresight and judgment, since it disheartened the Loyalists and gave up an important base of operation against the South. Even Cornwallis, who fought so bravely and successfully in the southern provinces, made a most serious mistake when he chose so weak a position as Yorktown, which was only defensible whilst the army of occupation had free access to the sea. Admiral Rodney, then at St. Eustatius, is open to censure for not having sent such naval reinforcements as would have enabled the British to command Chesapeake Bay, and his failure in this respect explains the inability of Clinton, an able general, to support Cornwallis in his hour of need. The moment the French fleet appeared in the Chesapeake, Cornwallis’s position became perfectly untenable, and he was obliged to surrender to the allied armies, who were vastly superior in number and equipment to his small force, which had not even the advantage of fighting behind well-constructed and perfect defences. No doubt, from the beginning to the end of the war–notably in the case of Burgoyne–the British were seriously hampered by the dilatory and unsafe counsels of Lord George Germaine, who was allowed by the favour of the king to direct military operations, and who, we remember, had disgraced himself on the famous battlefield of Minden.
All the conditions in the country at large were favourable to the imperial troops had they been commanded by generals of ability. The Loyalists formed a large available force, rendered valueless time after time by the incapacity of the men who directed operations. At no time did the great body of the American people warmly respond to the demands made upon them by congress to support Washington. Had it not been for New England and Virginia the war must have more than once collapsed for want of men and supplies. It is impossible to exaggerate the absence of public spirit in the States during this critical period of their history. The English historian, Lecky, who has reviewed the annals of those times with great fairness, has truly said: “The nobility and beauty of the character of Washington can hardly be surpassed; several of the other leaders of the revolution were men of ability and public spirit, and few armies have ever shown a nobler self-devotion than that which remained with Washington through the dreary winter at Valley Forge. But the army that bore those sufferings was a very small one, and the general aspect of the American people during the contest was far from heroic or sublime.” This opinion is fully borne out by those American historians who have reviewed the records of their national struggle in a spirit of dispassionate criticism. We know that in the spring of 1780 Washington himself wrote that his troops were “constantly on the point of starving for want of provisions and forage.” He saw “in every line of the army the most serious features of mutiny and sedition.” Indeed he had “almost ceased to hope,” for he found the country in general “in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests” that he dare not flatter himself “with any change for the better.” The war under such circumstances would have come to a sudden end had not France liberally responded to Washington’s appeals and supported him with her money, her sailors and her soldiers. In the closing years of the war Great Britain had not only to fight France, Spain, Holland and her own colonies, but she was without a single ally in Europe. Her dominion was threatened in India, and the king prevented the intervention of the only statesman in the kingdom to whom the colonists at any time were likely to listen with respect. When Chatham died with a protest on his lips “against the dismemberment of this ancient monarchy,” the last hope of bringing about a reconciliation between the revolutionists and the parent state disappeared for ever, and the Thirteen Colonies became independent at Yorktown.
SECTION 2.–Canada and Nova Scotia during the Revolution.
If Canada was saved to England during the American Revolution it was not on account of the energy and foresight shown by the king and his ministers in providing adequately for its defence, but mainly through the coolness and excellent judgment displayed by Governor Carleton. The Quebec act, for which he was largely responsible, was extremely unpopular in the Thirteen Colonies, on account of its having extended the boundaries of the province and the civil law to that western country beyond the Alleghanies, which the frontiersmen of Pennsylvania and Virginia regarded as specially their own domain. The fact that the Quebec act was passed by parliament simultaneously with the Boston port bill and other measures especially levelled against Massachusetts, gave additional fuel to the indignation of the people, who regarded this group of acts as part of a settled policy to crush the British-speaking colonies.
Under these circumstances, the invasion of Canada by Arnold in 1775, with the full approval of the continental congress, soon after the taking of Crown Point and Ticonderoga by the “Green Mountain boys” of Vermont, was a most popular movement which, it was hoped generally, would end in the easy conquest of a province, occupied by an alien people, and likely to be a menace in the future to the country south of the St. Lawrence. The capture of Chambly and St. John’s–the keys of Canada, by way of Lake Champlain–was immediately followed by the surrender of Montreal, which was quite indefensible, and the flight of Carleton to Quebec, where he wisely decided to make a stand against the invaders. At this time there were not one thousand regular troops in the country, and Carleton’s endeavour to obtain reinforcements from Boston had failed in consequence of the timidity of Admiral Graves, who expressed his opinion that it was not safe to send vessels up the St. Lawrence towards the end of the month of October. No dependence apparently could be placed at this critical juncture on a number of the French _habitants_, as soon as the districts of Richelieu, Montreal and Three Rivers were occupied by the continental troops. Many of them were quite ready to sell provisions to the invaders, provided they were paid in coin, and a few of them even joined Montgomery on his march to Quebec. Happily, however, the influence of the clergy and the _seigneurs_ was sufficiently powerful to make the great mass of the people neutral during this struggle for supremacy in the province.
The bishop and the priests, from the outset, were quite alive to the gravity of the situation. They could not forget that the delegates to the continental congress, who were now appealing to French Canada to join the rebellious colonists, had only a few weeks before issued an address to the people of England in which they expressed their astonishment that the British parliament should have established in Canada “a religion that had deluged their land in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world.” Almost simultaneously with the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain, Bishop Briand issued a _mandement_ in which he dwelt with emphasis on the great benefits which the people of French Canada had already derived from the British connection and called upon them all to unite in the defence of their province. No doubt can exist that these opinions had much effect at a time when Carleton had reason to doubt even the loyalty of the English population, some of whom were notoriously in league with the rebels across the frontier, and gave material aid to the invaders as soon as they occupied Montreal. It was assuredly the influence of the French clergy that rendered entirely ineffectual the mission of Chase, Franklin, and the Carrolls of Maryland–one of whom became the first Roman Catholic archbishop of the United States–who were instructed by congress to offer every possible inducement to the Roman Catholic subjects of England in Canada to join the revolutionary movement.
Richard Montgomery, who had commanded the troops invading Canada, had served at Louisbourg and Quebec, and had subsequently become a resident of New York, where his political opinions on the outbreak of the revolution had been influenced by his connection, through marriage, with the Livingstones, bitter opponents of the British government. His merit as a soldier naturally brought him into prominence when the war began, and his own ambition gladly led him to obey the order to go to Canada, where he hoped to emulate the fame of Wolfe and become the captor of Quebec. He formed a junction, close to the ancient capital, with the force under Benedict Arnold, who was at a later time to sully a memorable career by an act of the most deliberate treachery to his compatriots. When Montgomery and Arnold united their forces before Quebec, the whole of Canada, from Lake Champlain to Montreal, and from that town to the walls of the old capital, was under the control of the continental troops. Despite the great disadvantages under which he laboured, Carleton was able to perfect his defences of the city, which he determined to hold until reinforcements should arrive in the spring from England. Montgomery had neither men nor artillery to storm the fortified city which he had hoped to surprise and easily occupy with the aid of secret friends within its walls. Carleton, however, rallied all loyal men to his support, and the traitors on whom the invaders had relied were powerless to carry out any treacherous design they may have formed. The American commanders at once recognised the folly of a regular investment of the fortress during a long and severe winter, and decided to attempt to surprise the garrison by a night assault. This plan was earned out in the early morning of the thirty-first of December, 1775, when the darkness was intensified by flurries of light blinding snow, but it failed before the assailants could force the barricades which barred the way to the upper town, where all the principal offices and buildings were grouped, just below the chateau and fort of St. Louis, which towers above the historic heights. Montgomery was killed, Arnold was wounded at the very outset, and a considerable number of their officers and men were killed or wounded.
Carleton saved Quebec at this critical hour and was able in the course of the same year, when General Burgoyne arrived with reinforcements largely composed of subsidised German regiments, to drive the continental troops in confusion from the province and destroy the fleet which congress had formed on Lake Champlain. Carleton took possession of Crown Point but found the season too late–it was now towards the end of autumn–to attempt an attack on Ticonderoga, which was occupied by a strong and well-equipped garrison. After a careful view of the situation he concluded to abandon Crown Point until the spring, when he could easily occupy it again, and attack Ticonderoga with every prospect of success. But Carleton, soon afterwards, was ordered to give up the command of the royal troops to Burgoyne, who was instructed by Germaine to proceed to the Hudson River, where Howe was to join him. Carleton naturally resented the insult that he received and resigned the governor-generalship, to which General Haldimand was appointed. Carleton certainly brought Canada securely through one of the most critical epochs of her history, and there is every reason to believe that he would have saved the honour of England and the reputation of her generals, had he rather than Burgoyne and Howe been entrusted with the direction of her armies in North America.
Carleton’s administration of the civil government of the province was distinguished by a spirit of discretion and energy which deservedly places him among the ablest governors who ever presided over the public affairs of a colony. During the progress of the American war the legislative council was not able to meet until nearly two years after its abrupt adjournment in September, 1775. At this session, in 1777, ordinances were passed for the establishment of courts of King’s bench, common pleas, and probate.
A critical perusal of the valuable documents, placed of late years in the archives of the Dominion, clearly proves that it was a fortunate day for Canada when so resolute a soldier and far-sighted administrator as General Haldimand was in charge of the civil and military government of the country after the departure of Carleton. His conduct appears to have been dictated by a desire to do justice to all classes, and it is most unfair to his memory to declare that he was antagonistic to French Canadians. During the critical time when he was entrusted with the public defence it is impossible to accuse him of an arrogant or unwarrantable exercise of authority, even when he was sorely beset by open and secret enemies of the British connection. The French Canadian _habitant_ found himself treated with a generous consideration that he never obtained during the French regime, and wherever his services were required by the state, he was paid, not in worthless card money, but in British coin. During Haldimand’s administration the country was in a perilous condition on account of the restlessness and uncertainty that prevailed while the French naval and military expeditions were in America, using every means of exciting a public sentiment hostile to England and favourable to France among the French Canadians. Admiral D’Estaing’s proclamation in 1778 was a passionate appeal to the old national sentiment of the people, and was distributed in every part of the province. Dr. Kingsford believes that it had large influence in creating a powerful feeling which might have seriously threatened British dominion had the French been able to obtain permission from congress to send an army into the country. Whatever may have been the temper of the great majority of the French Canadians, it does not appear that many of them openly expressed their sympathy with France, for whom they would naturally still feel a deep love as their motherland. The assertion that many priests secretly hoped for the appearance of the French army is not justified by any substantial evidence except the fact that one La Valiniere was arrested for his disloyalty, and sent a prisoner to England. It appears, however, that this course was taken with the approval of the bishop himself, who was a sincere friend of the English connection throughout the war. Haldimand arrested a number of persons who were believed to be engaged in treasonable practices against England, and effectively prevented any successful movement being made by the supporters of the revolutionists, or sympathisers with France, whose emissaries were secretly working in the parishes.
Haldimand’s principal opponent during these troublous times was one Pierre du Calvet, an unscrupulous and able intriguer, whom he imprisoned on the strong suspicion of treasonable practices; but the evidence against Calvet at that time appears to have been inadequate, as he succeeded in obtaining damages against the governor-general in an English court. The imperial government, however, in view of all the circumstances brought to their notice, paid the cost of the defence of the suit. History now fully justifies the action of Haldimand, for the publication of Franklin’s correspondence in these later times shows that Calvet–who was drowned at sea and never again appeared in Canada–was in direct correspondence with congress, and the recognised emissary of the revolutionists at the very time he was declaring himself devoted to the continuance of British rule in Canada.
Leaving the valley of the St. Lawrence, and reviewing the conditions of affairs in the maritime provinces, during the American revolution, we see that some of the settlers from New England sympathised with their rebellious countrymen. The people of Truro, Onslow, and Londonderry, with the exception of five persons, refused to take the oath of allegiance, and were not allowed for some time to be represented in the legislature. The assembly was always loyal to the crown, and refused to consider the appeals that were made to it by circular letters, and otherwise, to give active aid and sympathy to the rebellious colonies During the war armed cruisers pillaged the small settlements at Charlottetown, Annapolis, Lunenburg, and the entrance of the St. John River. One expedition fitted out at Machias, in the present state of Maine, under the command of a Colonel Eddy, who had been a resident of Cumberland, attempted to seize Fort Cumberland–known as Beausejour in French Acadian days–at the mouth of the Missiquash. In this section of the country there were many sympathisers with the rebels, and Eddy expected to have an easy triumph. The military authorities were happily on the alert, and the only result was the arrest of a number of persons on the suspicion of treasonable designs. The inhabitants of the county of Yarmouth–a district especially exposed to attack–only escaped the frequent visits of privateers by secret negotiations with influential persons in Massachusetts. The settlers on the St. John River, at Maugerville, took measures to assist their fellow-countrymen in New England, but the defeat of the Cumberland expedition and the activity of the British authorities prevented the disaffected in Sunbury county–in which the original settlements of New Brunswick were then comprised–from rendering any practical aid to the revolutionists. The authorities at Halifax authorised the fitting out of privateers in retaliation for the damages inflicted on western ports by the same class of cruisers sailing from New England. The province was generally impoverished by the impossibility of carrying on the coasting trade and fisheries with security in these circumstances. The constant demand for men to fill the army and the fleet drained the country when labour was imperatively needed for necessary industrial pursuits, including the cultivation of the land. Some Halifax merchants and traders alone found profit in the constant arrival of troops and ships. Apart, however, from the signs of disaffection shown in the few localities I have mentioned, the people generally appear to have been loyal to England, and rallied, notably in the townships of Annapolis, Horton and Windsor, to the defence of the country, at the call of the authorities.
In 1783 the humiliated king of England consented to a peace with his old colonies, who owed their success not so much to the unselfishness and determination of the great body of the rebels as to the incapacity of British generals and to the patience, calmness, and resolution of the one great man of the revolution, George Washington. I shall in a later chapter refer to this treaty in which the boundaries between Canada and the new republic were so ignorantly and clumsily defined that it took half a century and longer to settle the vexed questions that arose in connection with territorial rights, and then the settlement was to the injury of Canada. So far as the treaty affected the Provinces its most important result was the forced migration of that large body of people who had remained faithful to the crown and empire during the revolution.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING BOUNDARY BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES BY TREATY OF 1783]
SECTION 3.–The United Empire Loyalists
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.
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 eighteenth 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 the Canadian Dominion are now regulated by just such principles as were urged in the interests of England and her colonies a hundred and twenty years ago 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.
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. As we have seen in the previous chapters, there was in the Acadian provinces, afterwards divided into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a British population of only some 14,000 souls, 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 twelve thousand 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 the 18th of May, 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 Quinte 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 Quinte, 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.
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS (1784–1812).
SECTION I–Beginnings of the provinces of New Brunswick, Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
On the 16th August, 1784, as a consequence of the coming of over ten thousand Loyalists to the valley of the St. John River, a new province was formed out of that portion of the ancient limits of Acadia, which extended northward from the isthmus of Chignecto to the province of Quebec, and eastward from the uncertain boundary of the St. Croix to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It received its present name in honour of the Brunswick-Luneburg or Hanoverian line which had given a royal dynasty to England, and its first governor was Colonel Thomas Carleton, a brother of the distinguished governor-general, whose name is so intimately associated with the fortunes of Canada during a most critical period of its history. The first executive council, which was also the legislative council, comprised some of the most eminent men of the Loyalist migration. For instance, George Duncan Ludlow; who had been a judge of the supreme court of New York; Jonathan Odell, the famous satirist and divine; William Hazen, a merchant of high reputation, who had large interests on the St. John River from 1763, and had proved his fidelity to the crown at a time when his countrymen at Maugerville were disposed to join the revolutionary party; Gabriel G. Ludlow, previously a colonel in a royal regiment; Edward Winslow, Daniel Bliss and Isaac Allen, all of whom had borne arms in the royal service and had suffered the loss of valuable property, confiscated by the successful rebels.
The constitution of 1784 provided for an assembly of twenty-six members who were elected in 1785, and met for the first time on the 3rd of January, 1786, at the Mallard House, a plain two-storey building on the north side of King Street. The city of St. John ceased to be the seat of government in 1787, when the present capital, Fredericton, first known as St. Anne’s, was chosen. Of the twenty-six members elected to this assembly, twenty-three were Loyalists, and the same class necessarily continued for many years to predominate in the legislature. The first speaker was Amos Botsford, the pioneer of the Loyalist migration to New Brunswick, whose grandson occupied the same position for a short time in the senate of the Dominion of Canada.
Coming to the province of Lower Canada we find it contained at this time a population of about a hundred thousand souls, of whom six thousand lived in Quebec and Montreal respectively. Only two thousand English-speaking persons resided in the province, almost entirely in the towns. Small as was the British minority, it continued that agitation for an assembly which had been commenced long before the passage of the Quebec act. A nominated council did not satisfy the political ambition of this class, who obtained little support from the French Canadian people. The objections of the latter arose from the working of the act itself. Difficulties had grown up in the administration of the law, chiefly in consequence of its being entrusted exclusively to men acquainted only with English jurisprudence, and not disposed to comply with the letter and intention of the imperial statute. As a matter of practice, French law was only followed as equity suggested; and the consequence was great legal confusion in the province. A question had also arisen as to the legality of the issue of writs of _habeas corpus_, and it was eventually necessary to pass an ordinance to remove all doubts on this important point.
The Loyalist settlers on the St. Lawrence and Niagara Rivers sent a petition in 1785 to the home government, praying for the establishment of a new district west of the River Beaudette “with the blessings of British laws and British government, and of exemption from French tenure of property.” While such matters were under the consideration of the imperial authorities, Sir Guy Carleton, once more governor-general of Canada, and lately raised to the peerage as Lord Dorchester, established, in 1788, five new districts for the express object of providing for the temporary government of the territory where the Loyalists had settled. These districts were known as Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau and Hesse, in the western country, and Gaspe in the extreme east of the province of Quebec, where a small number of the same class of people had also found new homes. Townships, ranging from eighty to forty thousand acres each, were also surveyed within these districts and parcelled out with great liberality among the Loyalists. Magistrates wore appointed to administer justice with the simplest possible machinery at a time when men trained in the law were not available.
The grants of land made to the Loyalists and their children were large, and in later years a considerable portion passed into the hands of speculators who bought them up at nominal sums. It was in connection with these grants that the name of “United Empire Loyalists” originated. An order-in-council was passed on the 9th of November, 1780, in accordance with the wish of Lord Dorchester “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 1783.” Accordingly the names of all persons falling under this designation were to be recorded as far as possible, in order that “their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers in the parish lists and rolls of militia of their respective districts, and other public remembrances of the province.”
The British cabinet, of which Mr. Pitt, the famous son of the Earl of Chatham, was first minister, now decided to divide the province of Quebec into two districts, with separate legislatures and governments. Lord Grenville, while in charge of the department of colonial affairs, wrote in 1789 to Lord Dorchester that the “general object of the plan is to assimilate the constitution of the province to that of Great Britain as nearly as the differences arising from the names of the people and from the present situation of the province will admit.” He also emphatically expressed the opinion that “a considerable degree of attention is due to the prejudices and habits of the French inhabitants, and every degree of caution should be used to continue to them the enjoyment of those civil and religious rights which were secured to them by the capitulation of the province, or have since been granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of the British government.” When the bill for the formation of the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada came before the house of commons, Mr. Adam Lymburner, an influential merchant of Quebec, appeared at the Bar and ably opposed the separation “as dangerous in every point of view to British interests in America, and to the safety, tranquillity and prosperity of the inhabitants of the province of Quebec” He pressed the repeal of the Quebec act in its entirety and the enactment of a perfectly new constitution “unclogged and unembarrassed with any laws prior to this period” He professed to represent the views “of the most intelligent and respectable of the French Canadians”; but their antagonism was not directed against the Quebec act in itself, but against the administration of the law, influenced as this was by the opposition of the British people to the French civil code. Nor does it appear, as Mr. Lymburner asserted, that the western Loyalists were hostile to the formation of two distinct provinces. He represented simply the views of the English-speaking inhabitants of Lower Canada, who believed that the proposed division would place them in a very small minority in the legislature and, as the issue finally proved, at the mercy of the great majority of the French Canadian representatives, while on the other hand the formation of one large province extending from Gaspe to the head of the great lakes would ensure an English representation sufficiently formidable to lessen the danger of French Canadian domination. However, the British government seems to have been actuated by a sincere desire to do justice to the French Canadians and the Loyalists of the upper province at one and the same time. When introducing the bill in the house of commons on the 7th March, 1791, Mr. Pitt expressed the hope that “the division would remove the differences of opinion which had arisen between the old and new inhabitants, since each province would have the right of enacting laws desired in its own house of assembly.” He believed a division to be essential, as “otherwise he could not reconcile the clashing interests known to exist.” Mr. Burke was of opinion that “to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws and customs, was a complete absurdity”, and he consequently approved of the division. Mr. Fox, from whom Burke became alienated during this debate, looked at the question in an entirely different light and was strongly of opinion that “it was most desirable to see the French and English inhabitants coalesce into one body, and the different distinctions of people extinguished for ever.”
The Constitutional act of 1791 established in each province a legislative council and assembly, with powers to make laws. The legislative council was to be appointed by the king for life, in Upper Canada it was to consist of not less than seven, and in Lower Canada of not less than fifteen members. The sovereign might, if he thought proper, annex hereditary titles of honour to the right of being summoned to the legislative council in either province–a provision which was never brought into operation. The whole number of members in the assembly of Upper Canada was not to be less than sixteen; in Lower Canada not less than fifty–to be chosen by a majority of votes in either case. The British parliament reserved to itself the right of levying and collecting customs-duties, for the regulation of navigation and commerce to be carried on between the two provinces, or between either of them and any other part of the British dominions or any foreign country. Parliament also reserved the power of directing the payment of these duties, but at the same time left the exclusive apportionment of all moneys levied in this way to the legislature, which could apply them to such public uses as it might deem expedient. The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was guaranteed permanently. The king was to have the right to set apart, for the use of the Protestant clergy in the colony, a seventh part of all uncleared crown lands. The governor might also be empowered to erect parsonages and endow them, and to present incumbents or ministers of the Church of England. The English criminal law was to obtain in both provinces.
In the absence of Lord Dorchester in England, the duty devolved on Major-General Alured Clarke, as lieutenant-governor, to bring the Lower Canadian constitution into force by a proclamation on the 18th February, 1791. On the 7th May, in the following year, the new province of Lower Canada was divided into fifty electoral districts, composed of twenty-one counties, the towns of Montreal and Quebec, and the boroughs of Three Rivers and William Henry (now Sorel). The elections to the assembly took place in June, and a legislative council of fifteen influential Canadians was appointed. The new legislature was convoked “for the despatch of business” on the 17th December, in the same year, in an old stone building known as the Bishop’s Palace, which stood on a rocky eminence in the upper town of the old capital.
Chief Justice Smith took the chair of the legislative council under appointment by the crown, and the assembly elected as its speaker Mr. Joseph Antome Panet, an eminent advocate, who was able to speak the two languages. In the house there were only sixteen members of British origin–and in later parliaments there was even a still smaller representation–while the council was nearly divided between the two nationalities. When the house proceeded to business, one of its first acts was to order that all motions, bills and other proceedings should be put in the two languages. We find in the list of French Canadian members of the two houses representatives of the most ancient and distinguished families of the province. A descendant of Pierre Boucher, governor of Three Rivers in 1653, and the author of a rare history of Canada, sat in the council of 1792 just as a Boucherville sits now-a-days in the senate of the Dominion. A Lotbiniere had been king’s councillor in 1680. A Chaussegros de Lery had been an engineer in the royal colonial corps; a Lanaudiere had been an officer in the Carignan regiment in 1652; a Salaberry was a captain in the royal navy, and his family won further honours on the field of Chateauguay in the war of 1812-15, when the soil of Lower Canada was invaded. A Taschereau had been a royal councillor in 1732. The names of Belestre, Valtric, Bonne, Rouville, St. Ours, and Duchesnay, are often met in the annals of the French regime, and show the high character of the representation in the first parliament of Lower Canada.
The village of Newark was chosen as the capital of Upper Canada by Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of the province. He had served with much distinction during the revolution as the commander of the Queen’s Rangers, some of whom had settled in the Niagara district. He was remarkable for his decision of character and for his ardent desire to establish the principles of British government in the new province. He was a sincere friend of the Loyalists, whose attachment to the crown he had had many opportunities of appreciating during his career in the rebellious colonies, and, consequently, was an uncompromising opponent of the new republic and of the people who were labouring to make it a success on the other side of the border. The new parliament met in a wooden building nearly completed on the sloping bank of the river, at a spot subsequently covered by a rampart of Fort George, which was constructed by Governor Simcoe on the surrender of Fort Niagara. A large boulder has been placed on the top of the rampart to mark the site of the humble parliament house of Upper Canada, which had to be eventually demolished to make place for new fortifications. The sittings of the first legislature were not unfrequently held under a large tent set up in front of the house, and having an interesting history of its own, since it had been carried around the world by the famous navigator, Captain Cook.
As soon as Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe assumed the direction of the government, he issued a proclamation dividing the province of Upper Canada into nineteen counties, some of winch were again divided into ridings for the purpose of electing the sixteen representatives to which the province was entitled under the act of 1791. One of the first acts of the legislature was to change the names of the divisions, proclaimed in 1788, to Eastern, Midland, Home, and Western Districts, which received additions in the course of years until they were entirely superseded by the county organisations. These districts were originally intended for judicial and legal purposes.
The legislature met under these humble circumstances at Newark on the 17th September, 1792. Chief Justice Osgoode was the speaker of the council, and Colonel John Macdonell, of Aberchalder, who had gallantly served in the royal forces during the revolution, was chosen presiding officer of the assembly. Besides him, there were eleven Loyalists among the sixteen members of the lower house. In the council of nine members there were also several Loyalists, the most prominent being the Honourable Richard Cartwright, the grandfather of the minister of trade and commerce in the Dominion ministry of 1896-1900.
SECTION 2.–Twenty years of political development (1792-1812).
The political conditions of the two decades from 1792 until 1812, when war broke out between England and the United States, were for the greater part of the time quite free from political agitation, and the representatives of the people in both the provinces of Canada were mostly occupied with the consideration of measures of purely provincial and local import. Nevertheless a year or two before the close of this period we can see in the province of Lower Canada premonitions of that irrepressible conflict between the two houses–one elected by the people and the other nominated by and under the influence of the crown–which eventually clogged the machinery of legislation. We can also see the beginnings of that strife of races which ultimately led to bloodshed and the suspension of the constitution given to Lower Canada in 1791.
In 1806 _Le Canadien_, published in the special interest of “Nos institutions, notre langue, et nos lois,” commenced that career of bitter hostility to the government which steadily inflamed the antagonism between the races. The arrogance of the principal officials, who had the ear of the governor, and practically engrossed all the influence in the management of public affairs, alienated the French Canadians, who came to believe that they were regarded by the British as an inferior race. As a matter of fact, many of the British inhabitants themselves had no very cordial feelings towards the officials, whose social exclusiveness offended all who did not belong to their special “set.” In those days the principal officials were appointed by the colonial office and the governor-general, and had little or no respect for the assembly, on which they depended in no wise for their continuance in office or their salaries. The French Canadians eventually made few distinctions among the British but looked on them as, generally speaking, enemies to their institutions.
It was unfortunate, at a time when great discretion and good temper were so essential, that Sir James Craig should have been entrusted with the administration of the government of Lower Canada. The critical state of relations with the United States no doubt influenced his appointment, which, from a purely military point of view, was excellent. As it was, however, his qualities as a soldier were not called into requisition, while his want of political experience, his utter incapacity to understand the political conditions of the country, his supreme indifference to the wishes of the assembly, made his administration an egregious failure. Indeed it may he said that it was during his time that the seed was sown for the growth of that political and racial antagonism which led to the rebellion of 1837. It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the consequences of his unjustifiable dismissal of Mr. Speaker Panet, and other prominent French Canadians, from the militia on the ground that they had an interest in the _Canadien_, or of his having followed up this very indiscreet act by the unwarrantable arrest of Mr. Bedard and some other persons, on the charge that they were the authors or publishers of what he declared to be treasonable writings. It is believed that the governor’s action was largely influenced by the statements and advice of Chief Justice Sewell, the head of the legislative council and the official class. Several persons were released when they expressed regret for the expression of any opinions considered extreme by the governor and his advisers, but Mr. Bedard remained in prison for a year rather than directly or indirectly admit that the governor had any justification for his arbitrary act Sir James attempted to obtain the approval of the home government; but his agent, a Mr. Ryland, a man of ability and suavity, prominent always in the official life of the country, signally failed to obtain the endorsement of his master’s action. He was unable to secure a promise that the constitution of 1791 should be repealed, and the legislative council of the Quebec act again given the supremacy in the province. Mr. Bedard was released just before the governor left the country, with the declaration that “his detention had been a matter of precaution and not of punishment”–by no means a manly or graceful withdrawal from what was assuredly a most untenable position from the very first moment Mr. Bedard was thrown into prison. Sir James Craig left the province a disappointed man, and died in England a few months after his return, from the effects of an incurable disease to which he had been a victim for many years. He was hospitable, generous and charitable, but the qualities of a soldier dominated all his acts of civil government.
In the other provinces, happily, there were no racial differences to divide the community and aggravate those political disputes that are sure to arise in the working of representative institutions in a British country. In Upper Canada for years the questions under discussion were chiefly connected with the disposal of the public lands, which in early times were too lavishly granted by Simcoe; and this led to the bringing in for a while of some undesirable immigrants from the United States –undesirable because they were imbued with republican and levelling ideas by no means favourable to the development and stability of English institutions of government. One of the first acts of the legislature was the establishment of courts of law and equity, in accordance with the practice and principles of English jurisprudence. Another very important measure was one for the legalisation of marriages which had been irregularly performed during early times in the absence of the clergy of the Anglican Church by justices of the peace, and even the officers in charge of military posts. Magistrates were still allowed to perform the marriage ceremony according to the ritual of the Church of England, when the services of a clergyman of that denomination were not available. Not until 1830 were more liberal provisions passed and the clergy of any recognised creed permitted to unite persons legally in wedlock.
It was in the second session of the first parliament of Upper Canada, where the Loyalists were in so huge a majority, that an act was passed “to prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contract for servitude within this province.” A considerable number of slave servants accompanied their Loyalist masters to the provinces at the end of the war, and we find for many years after in the newspapers advertisements relating to runaway servants of this class. The Loyalists in the maritime provinces, like the same class in Upper Canada, never gave their approval to the continuance of slavery. So early as 1800 some prominent persons brought before the supreme court of New Brunswick the case of one Nancy Morton, a slave, on a writ of _habeas corpus_; and her right to freedom was argued by Ward Chipmim, one of the Loyalist makers of New Brunswick. Although the argument in this case was not followed by a judicial conclusion–the four judges being divided in opinion–slavery thereafter practically ceased to exist, not only in New Brunswick, but in the other maritime provinces, leaving behind it a memory so faint, that the mere suggestion that there ever was a slave in either of these provinces is very generally received with surprise, if not with incredulity.
The early history of representative government in Prince Edward Island is chiefly a dull narrative of political conflict between the governors and the assemblies, and of difficulties and controversies arising out of the extraordinary concessions of lands to a few proprietors, who generally infringed the conditions of their grants and retarded the settlement of the island. In New Brunswick the legislature was entirely occupied with the consideration of measures for the administration of justice and local affairs in an entirely new country. Party government had not yet declared itself, and the Loyalists who had founded the province controlled the legislature for many years until a spirit of liberalism and reform found full expression and led to the enlargement of the public liberty.
In Nova Scotia the Loyalists gradually acquired considerable influence in the government of the province, as the imperial authorities felt it incumbent on them to provide official positions for those men who had sacrificed so much for the empire. Their power was increased after the arrival of Governor John Wentworth–afterwards made a baronet–who had been the royal governor of New Hampshire, and had naturally a strong antipathy to democratic principles in any form. In his time there grew up an official oligarchy, chiefly composed of members of the legislative council, then embodying within itself executive, legislative and judicial powers. A Liberal party soon arose in Nova Scotia, not only among the early New England settlers of the time of Governor Lawrence, but among the Loyalists themselves, for it is inevitable that wherever we find an English people, the spirit of popular liberty and the determination to enjoy self-government in a complete sense will sooner or later assert itself among all classes of men. The first prominent leader of the opposition to the Tory methods of the government was one William Cottnam Tonge, who was for some years in the employ of the naval department. Sir John Wentworth carried his hostility to the extent of dismissing him from his naval office and also of refusing to accept him as speaker of the assembly–the first example in colonial history of an extreme exercise of the royal prerogative by a governor. Mr. Tonge’s only crime appears to have been his bold assertion from time to time of the privileges of the house of assembly, as the guardian of the revenues and expenditures, against the interference of the governor and council. We find in Nova Scotia, as in the other provinces, during the period in question, the elements of perpetual discord, which found more serious expression after the war of 1812-15, and led to important constitutional changes.
The governors of those times became, from the very nature of their position, so many provincial autocrats, brought constantly into conflict with the popular body, and unable to conceive any system of government possible that did not place the province directly under the control of the imperial authorities, to whom appeals must be made in the most trivial cases of doubt or difficulty. The representative of the crown brooked no interference on the part of the assembly with what he considered his prerogatives and rights, and as a rule threw himself into the arms of the council, composed of the official oligarchy. In the course of time, the whole effort of the Liberal or Reform party, which gathered strength after 1815, was directed against the power of the legislative council. We hear nothing in the assemblies or the literature of the period under review in advocacy of the system of parliamentary or responsible government which was then in existence in the parent state and which we now enjoy in British North America. In fact, it was not until the beginning of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century that the Liberal politicians of Nova Scotia, like those of Upper Canada, recognised that the real remedy for existing political grievances was to be found in the harmonious operation of the three branches of the legislature. Even then we look in vain for an enunciation of this essential principle of representative government in the speeches or writings of a single French Canadian from 1791 until 1838, when the constitution of Lower Canada was suspended as a result of rebellion.
During the twenty years of which I am writing the government of Canada had much reason for anxiety on account of the unsatisfactory state of the relations between Great Britain and the United States, and of the attempts of French emissaries after the outbreak of the revolution in France to stir up sedition in Lower Canada. One of the causes of the war of 1812-15 was undoubtedly the irritation that was caused by the retention of the western posts by Great Britain despite the stipulation in the definitive treaty of peace to give them up “with all convenient speed.” This policy of delay was largely influenced by the fact that the new republic had failed to take effective measures for the restitution of the estates of the Loyalists or for the payment of debts due to British creditors; but in addition there was probably still, as in 1763 and 1774, a desire to control the fur-trade and the Indians of the west, who claimed that the lands between the Canadian frontier and the Ohio were exclusively their hunting-grounds, not properly included within the territory ceded to the United States. Jay’s treaty, arranged in 1794, with the entire approval of Washington, who thereby incurred the hostility of the anti-British party, was a mere temporary expedient for tiding over the difficulties between England and the United States. Its most important result so far as it affected Canada was the giving up in 1797 of the western posts including Old Fort Niagara. It became then necessary to remove the seat of government from Niagara, as an insecure position, and York, which regained its original Indian name of Toronto in 1834, was chosen as the capital by Lord Dorchester in preference to a place suggested by Simcoe on the Tranche, now the Thames, near where London now stands. The second parliament of Upper Canada met in York on the first of June, 1797, when Mr. Russell, who had been secretary to Sir Henry Clinton during the American war, was administrator of the government after the departure of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe from a province whose interests he had so deeply at heart.
After the declaration of war against England by the republican convention of France in 1793, French agents found their way into the French parishes of Lower Canada, and endeavoured to make the credulous and ignorant _habitants_ believe that France would soon regain dominion in her old colony. During General Prescott’s administration, one McLane, who was said to be not quite mentally responsible for his acts, was convicted at Quebec for complicity in the designs of French agents, and was executed near St. John’s gate with all the revolting incidents of a traitor’s death in those relentless times. His illiterate accomplice, Frechette, was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was soon released on the grounds of his ignorance of the serious crime he was committing. No doubt in these days some restlessness existed in the French Canadian districts, and the English authorities found it difficult for a time to enforce the provisions of the militia act. Happily for the peace and security of Canada, the influence of the Bishop and Roman Catholic clergy, who looked with horror on the murderous acts of the revolutionists of France, was successfully exerted for the support of British rule, whose justice and benignity their church had felt ever since the conquest. The name of Bishop Plessis must always be mentioned in terms of sincere praise by every English writer who reviews the history of those trying times, when British interests would have been more than once in jeopardy had it not been for the loyal conduct of this distinguished prelate and the priests under his direction.
I shall now proceed to narrate the events of the unfortunate war which broke out in 1812 between England and the United States, as a result of the unsettled relations of years, and made Canada a battle ground on which were given many illustrations of the patriotism and devotion of the Canadian people, whose conquest, the invaders thought, would be a very easy task.
CHAPTER V.
THE WAR OF 1812–15.
SECTION I.–Origin of the war between England and the United States.
The causes of the war of 1812-15 must be sought in the history of Europe and the relations between England and the United States for several decades before it actually broke out. Great Britain was engaged in a supreme struggle not only for national existence but even for the liberties of Europe, from the moment when Napoleon, in pursuance of his overweening ambition, led his armies over the continent on those victorious marches which only ended amid the ice and snow of Russia. Britain’s battles were mainly to be fought on the sea where her great fleet made her supreme. The restriction of all commerce that was not British was a necessary element in the assertion of her naval superiority. If neutral nations were to be allowed freely to carry the produce of the colonies of Powers with whom Great Britain was at war, then they were practically acting as allies of her enemies, and were liable to search and seizure. For some time, however, Great Britain thought it expedient to concur in the practice that when a cargo was trans-shipped in the United States, and paid a duty there, it became to all intents and purposes American property and might be carried to a foreign country and there sold, as if it were the actual produce of the republic itself. This became a very profitable business to the merchants of the United States, as a neutral nation, during the years when Great Britain was at war with France, since they controlled a large proportion of all foreign commerce. Frauds constantly occurred during the continuance of this traffic, and at last British statesmen felt the injury to their commerce was so great that the practice was changed to one which made American vessels liable to be seized and condemned in British prize courts whenever it was clear that their cargoes were not American produce, but were actually purchased at the port of an enemy. Even provisions purchased from an enemy or its colonies were considered “contraband of war” on the ground that they afforded actual aid and encouragement to an enemy. The United States urged at first that only military stores could fall under this category, and eventually went so far as to assert the principle that under all circumstances “free ships make free goods,” and that neutral ships had a right to carry any property, even that of a nation at war with another power, and to trade when and where they liked without fear of capture. England, however, would not admit in those days of trial principles which would practically make a neutral nation an ally of her foe. She persisted in restricting the commerce of the United States by all the force she had upon the sea.
This restrictive policy, which touched the American pocket and consequently the American heart so deeply, was complicated by another question of equal, if not greater, import. The forcible impressment of men to man the British fleet had been for many years a necessary evil in view of the national emergency, and of the increase in the mercantile marine which attracted large numbers to its service. Great abuses were perpetrated in the operation of this harsh method of maintaining an efficient naval force, and there was no part of the British Isles where the presence of a press gang did not bring dismay into many a home. Great Britain, then and for many years later, upheld to an extreme degree the doctrine of perpetual allegiance; she refused to recognise the right of any of her citizens to divest themselves of their national fealty and become by naturalisation the subject of a foreign power or a citizen of the United States Such a doctrine was necessarily most obnoxious to the government and people of a new republic like the United States, whose future development rested on the basis of a steady and large immigration, which lost much of its strength and usefulness as long as the men who came into the country were not recognised as American citizens at home and abroad. Great Britain claimed the right, as a corollary of this doctrine of indefeasible allegiance, to search the neutral ships of the United States during the war with France, to enquire into the nationality of the seaman on board of those vessels, to impress all those whom her officers had reason to consider British subjects by birth, and to pay no respect to the fact that they may have been naturalised in the country of their adoption. The assertion of the right to search a neutral vessel and to impress seamen who were British subjects has in these modern times been condemned as a breach of the sound principle, that a right of search can only be properly exercised in the case of a neutral’s violation of his neutrality–that is to say, the giving of aid to one of the parties to the war The forcible abduction of a seaman under the circumstances stated was simply an unwarrantable attempt to enforce municipal law on board a neutral vessel, which was in effect foreign territory, to be regarded as sacred and inviolate except in a case where it was brought under the operation of a recognised doctrine of international law. Great Britain at that critical period of her national existence would not look beyond the fact that the acts of the United States as a neutral were most antagonistic to the energetic efforts she was making to maintain her naval supremacy during the European crisis created by Napoleon’s ambitious designs.
The desertion of British seamen from British ships, for the purpose of finding refuge in the United States and then taking service in American vessels, caused great irritation in Great Britain and justified, in the opinion of some statesmen and publicists who only regarded national necessities, the harsh and arbitrary manner in which English officials stopped and searched American shipping on the high seas, seized men whom they claimed to be deserters, and impressed any whom they asserted to be still British subjects. In 1807 the British frigate “Leopard,” acting directly under the orders of the admiral at Halifax, even ventured to fire a broadside into the United States cruiser “Chesapeake” a few miles from Chesapeake Bay, killed and wounded a number of her crew, and then carried off several sailors who were said to be, and no doubt were, deserters from the English service and who were the primary cause of the detention of this American man-of-war. For this unjustifiable act England subsequently made some reparation, but nevertheless it rankled for years in the minds of the party hostile to Great Britain and helped to swell the list of grievances which the American government in the course of years accumulated against the parent state as a reason for war.
The difficulties between England and the United States, which culminated in war before the present century was far advanced, were also intensified by disputes which commenced soon after the treaty of 1783. I have already shown that for some years the north-west posts were still retained by the English on the ground, it is understood, that the claims of English creditors, and especially those of the Loyalists, should be first settled before all the conditions of the treaty could be carried out. The subsequent treaty of 1794, negotiated by Chief Justice Jay, adjusted these and other questions, and led for some years to a better understanding with Great Britain, but at the same time led to a rupture of friendly relations with the French Directory, who demanded the repeal of that treaty as in conflict with the one made with France in 1778, and looked for some tangible evidence of sympathetic interest with the French revolution. The war that followed with the French republic was insignificant in its operations, and was immediately terminated by Napoleon when he overthrew the Directory, and seized the government for his own ambitious objects. Subsequently, the administration of the United States refused to renew the Jay Treaty when it duly expired, and as a consequence the relatively amicable relations that had existed between the Republic and England again became critical, since American commerce and shipping were exposed to all the irritating measures that England felt compelled under existing conditions to carry out in pursuance of the policy of restricting the trade of neutral vessels. Several attempts were made by the British government, between the expiry of the Jay Treaty and the actual rupture of friendly relations with the United States, to come to a better understanding with respect to some of the questions in dispute, but the differences between the two Powers were so radical that all negotiations came to naught. Difficulties were also complicated by the condition of political parties in the American republic and the ambition of American statesmen. When the democratic republicans or “Strict constructionists,” as they have been happily named, with Jefferson at their head, obtained office, French ideas came into favour; while the federalists or “Broad constitutionalists,” of whom Washington, Hamilton and Adams had been the first exponents, were anxious to keep the nation free from European complications and to settle international difficulties by treaty and not by war. But this party was in a hopeless minority, during the critical times when international difficulties were resolving themselves into war, and was unable to influence public opinion sufficiently to make negotiations for the maintenance of peace successful, despite the fact that it had a considerable weight in the states of New England.
The international difficulties of the United States entered upon a critical condition when Great Britain, in her assertion of naval supremacy and restricted commerce as absolutely essential to her national security, issued an order-in-council which declared a strict blockade of the European coast from Brest to the Elbe. Napoleon retaliated with the Berlin decree, which merely promulgated a paper blockade of the British Isles. Then followed the later British orders-in-council, which prevented the shipping of the United States from trading with any country where British vessels could not enter, and allowed them only to trade with other European ports where they made entries and paid duties in English custom-houses. Napoleon increased the duties of neutral commerce by the Milan decree of 1807, which ordered the seizure of all neutral vessels which might have been searched by English cruisers. These orders meant the ruin of American commerce, which had become so profitable; and the Washington government attempted to retaliate, first by forbidding the importation of manufactures from England and her colonies, and, when this effort was ineffective, by declaring an embargo in its own ports, which had only the result of still further crippling American commerce at home and abroad. Eventually, in place of this unwise measure, which, despite its systematic evasion, brought serious losses to the whole nation and seemed likely to result in civil war in the east, where the discontent was greatest, a system of non-intercourse with both England and France was adopted, to last so long as either should press its restrictive measures against the republic, but this new policy of retaliation hardly impeded American commerce, of which the profits were far greater than the risks. The leaders of the Democratic party were now anxious to conciliate France, and endeavoured to persuade the nation that Napoleon had practically freed the United States from the restrictions to which it so strongly objected. It is a matter beyond dispute that the French decrees were never exactly annulled; and the Emperor was pursuing an insidious policy which confiscated American vessels in French ports at the very moment he was professing friendship with the United States. His object was to force the government of that country into war with England, and, unfortunately for its interests, its statesmen lent themselves to his designs.
The Democratic leaders, determined to continue in power, fanned the flame against England, whose maritime superiority enabled her to inflict the greatest injury on American shipping and commerce. The governing party looked to the south and west for their principal support. In these sections the interests were exclusively agricultural, while in New England, where the Federalists were generally in the majority, the commercial and maritime elements predominated. In Kentucky, Ohio, and other states there was a strong feeling against England on account of the current belief that the English authorities in Canada had tampered with the Indian tribes and induced them to harass the settlers until Harrison, on the eve of the war of 1812, effectually cowed them. It is, however, now well established by the Canadian archives that Sir James Craig, when governor-general in 1807, actually warned the Washington government of the restlessness of the western Indians, and of the anxiety of the Canadian authorities to avoid an Indian war in the north-west, which might prejudicially operate against the western province. This fact was not, however, generally known, and the feeling against Canada and England was kept alive by the dominant party in the United States by the disclosure that one John Henry had been sent by the Canadian government in 1808 to ascertain the sentiment of the people of New England with respect to the relations between the two countries and the maintenance of peace. Henry’s correspondence was really quite harmless, but when it had been purchased from him by Madison, on the refusal of the imperial government to buy his silence, it served the temporary purpose of making the people of the west believe that England was all the while intriguing against the national interests, and endeavouring to create a discontent which might end in civil strife. Under these circumstances the southern leaders, Clay of Kentucky, and Calhoun of South Carolina, who always showed an inveterate animosity against England, forced Madison, then anxious to be re-elected president, to send a warlike message to congress, which culminated in a formal declaration of hostilities on the 18th of June, 1812, only one day later than the repeal of the obnoxious order-in-council by England. When the repeal became known some weeks later in Canada and the United States, the province of Upper Canada had been actually invaded by Hull, and the government of the United States had no desire whatever to desist from warlike operations, which, they confidently believed, would end in the successful occupation of Canada at a time when England was unable, on account of her European responsibilities, to extend to its defenders effective assistance.
SECTION 2.–Canada during the war.
In 1812 there were five hundred thousand people living in the provinces of British North America. Of this number, the French people of Lower Canada made up at least one half. These people had some grievances, and political agitators, notably the writers of the _Canadien_, were creating jealousies and rivalries between the French and English races chiefly on the ground of the dominant influence of the British minority in the administration of public affairs. On the whole, however, the country was prosperous and the people generally contented with British rule, the freedom of which presented such striking contrast to the absolutism of the old French regime. The great majority of the eighty thousand inhabitants of Upper or Western Canada were Loyalists or descendants of Loyalists, who had become deeply attached to their new homes, whilst recalling with feelings of deep bitterness the sufferings and trials of the American revolution. This class was naturally attached to British rule and hostile to every innovation which had the least semblance of American republicanism. In the western part of the province of Upper Canada there was, however, an American element composed of people who had been brought into the country by the liberal grants of land made to settlers, and who were not animated by the high sentiments of the Loyalists of 1783 and succeeding years. These people, for some years previous to 1812, were misled by political demagogues like Wilcox and Marcle, both of whom deserted to the enemy soon after the outbreak of the war. Emissaries from the republic were busily engaged for months, we now know, in fomenting a feeling against England among these later immigrants, and in persuading them that the time was close at hand when Canada would be annexed to the federal republic. Some attempts were even made to create discontent among the French Canadians, but no success appears to have followed these efforts in a country where the bishop, priests and leading men of the rural communities perfectly appreciated the value of British connection.
The statesmen of the United States, who were responsible for the war, looked on the provinces as so many weak communities which could be easily invaded and conquered by the republican armies. Upper Canada, with its long and exposed frontier and its small and scattered population, was considered utterly indefensible and almost certain to be successfully occupied by the invading forces. There was not a town of one thousand souls in the whole of that province, and the only forts of any pretension were those on the Niagara frontier. Kingston was a fortified town of some importance in the eastern part of the province, but Toronto had no adequate means of defence. At the commencement of the war there were only fourteen hundred and fifty regular troops in the whole country west of Montreal, and these men were scattered at Kingston, York, Niagara, Chippewa, Erie, Amherstburg, and St. Joseph. The total available militia did not exceed four thousand men, the majority of whom had little or no knowledge of military discipline, and were not even in the possession of suitable arms and accoutrements, though, happily, all were animated by the loftiest sentiments of courage and patriotism. In the lower provinces of Eastern Canada and Nova Scotia there was a considerable military force, varying in the aggregate from four to five thousand men. The fortifications of Quebec were in a tolerable state of repair, but the citadel which dominates Halifax was in a dilapidated condition. The latter port was, however, the rendezvous of the English fleet, which always afforded adequate protection to British interests on the Atlantic coasts of British North America, despite the depredations of privateers and the successes attained during the first months of the war by the superior tonnage and equipment of the frigates of the republic. But the hopes that were entertained by the war party in the United States could be gathered from the speeches of Henry Clay of Kentucky, who believed that the issue would be favourable to their invading forces, who would even “negotiate terms of peace at Quebec or Halifax.”
The United States had now a population of at least six millions and a half of whites. It was estimated that during the war the government had a militia force of between four and five hundred thousand men available for service, while the regular army amounted to thirty-four thousand officers and privates. The forces that invaded Canada by the way of Lake Champlain, Sackett’s Harbour, the Niagara and Detroit Rivers, were vastly superior in numbers to the Canadian army of defence, except in the closing months of the war, when Prevost had under his command a large body of Peninsular veterans. One condition was always in favour of Canada, and that was the sullen apathy or antagonism felt by the people of New England with respect to the war. Had they been in a different spirit, Lower Canada would have been in far greater danger of successful invasion and occupation than was the case at any time during the progress of the conflict. The famous march of Arnold on Quebec by the Kennebec and Chaudiere Rivers might have been repeated with more serious consequences while Prevost, and not Guy Carleton, was in supreme command in the French Canadian province.
I can attempt to limn only the events which stand out most plainly on the graphic pages of this momentous epoch in Canadian history, and to pay a humble tribute to the memory of men, whose achievements saved Canada for England in those days of trial. From the beginning to the end of the conflict, Upper Canada was the principal battle ground upon which the combatants fought for the supremacy in North America. Its frontiers were frequently crossed, its territory was invaded, and its towns and villages were destroyed by the ruthless hand of a foe who entered the province not only with the sword of the soldier but even with the torch of the incendiary. The plan of operations at the outset of the campaign was to invade the province across the Niagara and Detroit Rivers, neither of which offered any real obstacles to the passage of a determined and well-managed army in the absence of strong fortifications, or a superior defensive force, at every vulnerable point along the Canadian banks. Queenston was to be a base of operations for a large force, which would overrun the whole province and eventually co-operate with troops which could come up from Lake Champlain and march on Montreal. The forces of the United States in 1812 acted with considerable promptitude as soon as war was officially declared, and had they been led by able commanders the result might have been most unfortunate for Canada. The resources for defence were relatively insignificant, and indecision and weakness were shown by Sir George Prevost, then commander-in-chief and governor-general–a well meaning man but wanting in ability as a military leader, who was also hampered by the vacillating counsels of the Liverpool administration, which did not believe in war until the province was actually invaded. It was fortunate for Canada that she had then at the head of the government in the upper province General Brock, who possessed decision of character and the ability to comprehend the serious situation of affairs at a critical juncture, when his superiors both in England and Canada did not appear to understand its full significance.
The assembly of Upper Canada passed an address giving full expression to the patriotic sentiments which animated all classes of people when the perilous state of affairs and the necessity for energetic action became apparent to the dullest minds. The Loyalists and their descendants, as well as other loyal people, rallied at the moment of danger to the support of Brock; and the immediate result of his decided orders was the capture of the post of Michillimackinac, which had been, ever since the days of the French regime, a position of great importance on the upper lakes. Then followed the ignominious surrender of General Hull and his army to Brock, and the consequent occupation of Detroit and the present state of Michigan by the British troops. Later, on the Niagara frontier, an army of invaders was driven from Queenston Heights, but this victory cost the life of the great English general, whose promptitude at the commencement of hostilities had saved the province. Among other brave men who fell with Brock was the attorney-general of the province, Lieutenant-Colonel John Macdonell, who was one of the general’s aides. General Sheaffe, the son of a Loyalist, took command and drove the enemy across the river, in whose rapid waters many were drowned while struggling to save themselves from the pursuing British soldiery, determined to avenge the death of their honoured chief. A later attempt by General Smyth to invade Canadian territory opposite Black Rock on the Niagara River, was also attended with the same failure that attended the futile attempts to cross the Detroit and to occupy the heights of Queenston. At the close of 1812 Upper Canada was entirely free from the army of the republic, the Union Jack floated above the fort at Detroit, and the ambitious plan of invading the French province and seizing Montreal was given up as a result of the disasters to the enemy in the west. The party of peace in New England gathered strength, and the promoters of the war had no consolation except the triumphs obtained at sea by some heavily armed and well manned frigates of the United States to the surprise of the government and people of England, who never anticipated that their maritime superiority could be in any way endangered by a nation whose naval strength was considered so insignificant. But these victories of the republic on the ocean during the first year of the war were soon effaced by the records of the two subsequent years when “The Chesapeake” was captured by “The Shannon” and other successes of the British ships restored the prestige of England on the sea.
During the second year of the war the United States won some military and naval successes in the upper province, although the final results of the campaign were largely in favour of the defenders of Canada. The war opened with the defeat of General Winchester at Frenchtown on the River Raisins in the present state of Michigan; but this success, which was won by General Procter, was soon forgotten in the taking of York, the capital of the province, and the destruction of its public buildings. This event forced General Sheaffe to retire to Kingston, while General Vincent retreated to Burlington Heights as soon as the invading army occupied Fort George and dominated the Niagara frontier. Sir George Prevost showed his military incapacity at Sackett’s Harbour, where he had it in his power to capture a post which was an important base of operations against the province. On the other hand Colonel George Macdonell made a successful attack on Ogdensburg and fittingly avenged the raid that an American force had made a short time previously on Elizabethtown, which was called Brockville not long afterwards in honour of the noted general. An advance of the invading army against General Vincent was checked by the memorable success won at Stoney Creek by Colonel Harvey and the surrender at Beaver Dams of Colonel Boerstler to Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, whose clever strategy enabled him to capture a large force of the enemy while in command of a few soldiers and Indians. When September arrived, the small, though all-important, British fleet on Lake Erie, under the command of Captain Barclay, sustained a fatal defeat at Put-in-Bay, and the United States vessels under Commodore Perry held full control of Lake Erie. A few weeks later, General Procter lost the reputation which he had won in January by his defeat of Winchester, and was beaten, under circumstances which disgraced him in the opinion of his superiors, on the River Thames not far from the Indian village of Moraviantown. The American forces were led by General Harrison, who had won some reputation in the Indian campaign in the north-west and who subsequently became, as his son in later times, a president of the United States.
It was in this engagement that the Shawenese chief, Tecumseh, was killed, in him England lost a faithful and brave ally. English prospects in the west were consequently gloomy for some time, until the autumn of 1813, when the auspicious tidings spread from the lakes to the Atlantic that the forces of the republic, while on their march to Montreal by the way of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, had been successfully met and repulsed at Chateauguay and Chrysler’s Farm, two of the most memorable engagements of the war, when we consider the insignificant forces that checked the invasion and saved Canada at a most critical time.
In the last month of the same year Fort George was evacuated by the American garrison, but not before General McLure had shamelessly burned the pretty town of Niagara, and driven helpless women and children into the ice and snow of a Canadian winter. General Drummond, who was in command of the western army, retaliated by the capture of Fort Niagara and the destruction of all the villages on the American side of the river as far as Buffalo, then a very insignificant place. When the new year dawned the only Canadian place in possession of the enemy was Amherstburg on the western frontier.
The third and last year of the war was distinguished by the capture of Oswego and Prairie-des-Chiens by British expeditions; the repulse of a large force of the invaders at Lacolle Mills in Lower Canada; the surrender of Fort Erie to the enemy, the defeat of General Riall at Street’s or Usher’s Creek in the Niagara district, the hotly contested battle won at Lundy’s Lane by Drummond, and the ignominious retreat from Plattsburg of Sir George Prevost, in command of a splendid force of peninsular veterans, after the defeat of Commodore Downey’s fleet on Lake Champlain. Before the year closed and peace was proclaimed, Fort Erie was evacuated, the stars and stripes were driven from Lake Ontario, and all Canadian territory except Amherstburg was free from the invader. The capital of the United States had been captured by the British and its public buildings burned as a severe retaliation for the conduct of the invading forces at York, Niagara, Moraviantown, St. David’s and Port Dover. Both combatants were by this time heartily tired of the war, and terms of peace were arranged by the treaty of Ghent at the close of 1814; but before the news reached the south, General Jackson repulsed General Packenham with heavy losses at New Orleans, and won a reputation which made him president a few years later.
The maritime provinces never suffered from invasion, but on the contrary obtained some advantages from the presence of large numbers of British men-of-war in their seaports, and the expenditure on military and naval supplies during the three years of war. Following the example of the Canadas, the assemblies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia voted large sums of money and embodied the militia for active service or general purposes of defence. The assembly of New Brunswick, essentially the province of the Loyalists, declared in 1813 that the people were “ready and determined to repel every aggression which the infatuated policy of the American government may induce it to commit on the soil of New Brunswick.” But the war was so unpopular in the state of Maine and other parts of New England that the provinces by the sea were comparatively safe from aggression and conflict. Soon after the commencement of hostilities the governors of Maine and New Brunswick issued proclamations which prevented hostilities for two years along their respective borders. In Nova Scotia there was much activity during the war, and letters of marque were issued to privateers which made many captures, and offered some compensation for the losses inflicted on the coasting and fishing interests by the same class of American vessels. In 1814 it was decided by the imperial authorities to break the truce which had practically left Maine free from invasion, and Sir John Sherbrooke, then governor of Nova Scotia, and Rear-Admiral Griffith took possession of Machias, Eastport, Moose, and other islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.
The people of the United States generally welcomed the end of a war which brought them neither honour nor profit and seemed likely to break the union into fragments in consequence of the hostility that had existed in New England through the conflict from the very beginning. The news of Prevost’s retreat from Plattsburg no doubt hastened the decision of the British government to enter into negotiations for peace, which was settled on terms by no means favourable to Canadian interests. The question of the New Brunswick boundary might have been then adjusted on conditions which would have prevented at a later day the sacrifice of a large tract of territory in Maine which would be now of great value to the Dominion. The only advantage which accrued to the Canadians was a later convention which gave the people of the provinces full control of fisheries, ignorantly sacrificed by the treaty of 1783.
No class of the people of Canada contributed more to the effectiveness of the militia and the successful defence of the country than the descendants of the Loyalists, who formed so large and influential a portion of the English population of British North America. All the loyal settlements on the banks of the St. Lawrence, on the Niagara frontier, and on the shores of Lake Erie, sent many men to fight by the side of the regular British forces. Even aged men, who had borne arms in the revolutionary war, came forward with an enthusiasm which showed that age had not impaired their courage or patriotism, and although they were exempted from active service, they were found most useful in stationary duties at a time when Canada demanded the experience of such veterans. “Their lessons and example,” wrote General Sheaffe, “will have a happy influence on the youth of the militia ranks.” When Hull invaded the province and issued his boastful and threatening proclamation he used language which must have seemed a mockery to the children of the Loyalists. They remembered too well the sufferings of their fathers and brothers during “the stormy period of the revolution,” and it seemed derisive to tell them now that they were to be “emancipated from tyranny and oppression and restored to the dignified station of free men.” The proclamation issued by Governor Brock touched the loyal hearts of a people whose family histories were full of examples of “oppression and tyranny,” and of the kind consideration and justice of England in their new homes. “Where,” asked Brock, with the confidence of truth, “is the Canadian subject who can truly affirm to himself that he has been injured by the government in his person, his property, or his liberty? Where is to be found, in any part of the world, a growth so rapid in prosperity and wealth as this colony exhibits?” These people, to whom this special appeal was made at this national crisis, responded with a heartiness which showed that gratitude and affection lay deep in their hearts. Even the women worked in the field that their husbands, brothers and sons might drive the invaders from Canadian soil. The 104th Regiment, which accomplished a remarkable march of thirteen days in the depth of winter, from Fredericton to Quebec–a distance of three hundred and fifty miles–and lost only one man by illness, was composed of descendants of the loyal founders of New Brunswick. This march was accomplished practically without loss, while more than three hundred men were lost by Benedict Arnold in his expedition of 1777 against Quebec by the way of Kennebec–a journey not more dangerous or arduous than that so successfully accomplished by the New Brunswick Loyalists. In 1814 considerable numbers of seamen for service in the upper lakes passed through New Brunswick to Quebec, and were soon followed by several companies of the 8th or King’s Regiment. The patriotism of the Loyalists of New Brunswick was shown by grants of public money and every other means in their power, while these expeditions were on their way to the seat of war in the upper provinces.
Historians and poets have often dwelt on the heroism of Laura Secord, daughter and wife of Loyalists, who made a perilous journey in 1814 through the Niagara district, and succeeded in warning Lieutenant Fitzgibbon of the approach of the enemy, thus enabling him with a few soldiers and Indians to surprise Colonel Boerstler near Beaver Dams and force him by clever strategy to surrender with nearly 600 men and several cannon. Even boys fled from home and were found fighting in the field. The Prince Regent, at the close of the war, expressly thanked the Canadian militia, who had “mainly contributed to the immediate preservation of the province and its future security.” The Loyalists, who could not save the old colonies to England, did their full share in maintaining her supremacy in the country she still owned in the valley of the St. Lawrence and on the shores of the Atlantic.
As Bishop Plessis stimulated a patriotic sentiment among the French Canadians, so Vicar-General Macdonell of Glengarry, subsequently the first Roman Catholic bishop of Upper Canada, performed good service by assisting in the formation of a Glengarry regiment, and otherwise taking an active part in the defence of the province, where his will always be an honoured name. Equally indefatigable in patriotic endeavour was Bishop Strachan, then rector of York, who established “The Loyal and Patriotic Society,” which did incalculable good by relieving the necessities of women and children, when the men were serving in the battlefield, by providing clothing and food for the soldiery, and otherwise contributing towards the comfort and succour of all those who were taking part in the public defences. Of the engagements of the war there are two which, above all others, possess features on which the historian must always like to dwell. The battle which was fought against such tremendous odds on the banks of the Chateauguay by less than a thousand French Canadians, led by Salaberry and Macdonell, recalls in some respects the defeat of Braddock in 1755. The disaster to the British forces near the Monongahela was mainly the result of the strategy of the Indians, who were dispersed in the woods which reechoed to their wild yells and their ever fatal shots fired under cover of trees, rocks and stumps. The British were paralysed as they saw their ranks steadily decimated by the fire of an enemy whom they could never see, and who seemed multitudinous as their shrieks and shouts were heard far and wide in that Bedlam of the forest. The leaves that lay thick and deep on the ground were reddened with the blood of many victims helpless against the concealed, relentless savages. The woods of the Chateauguay did not present such a scene of carnage as was witnessed at the battle of the Monongahela, but nevertheless they seemed to the panic-stricken invaders, who numbered many thousands, alive with an enemy whose strength was enormously exaggerated as bugle sounds and Indian yells made a fearful din on every side. Believing themselves surrounded by forces far superior in numbers, the invaders became paralysed with fear and fled in disorder from an enemy whom they could not see, and who might close upon them at any moment. In this way Canadian pluck and strategy won a famous victory which saved the province of Lower Canada at a most critical moment of the war.
If we leave the woods of Chateauguay, where a monument has been raised in recognition of this brilliant episode of the war, and come to the country above which rises the mist of the cataract of Niagara, we see a little acclivity over which passes that famous thoroughfare called “Lundy’s Lane.” Here too rises a stately shaft in commemoration of another famous victory–in many respects the most notable of the war–won by a gallant Englishman, whose name still clings to the pretty town close by.
This battle was fought on a midsummer night, when less than three thousand British and Canadian troops fought six hours against a much superior force, led by the ablest officers who had taken part in the war. For three hours, from six to nine o’clock at night, less than two thousand held the height, which was the main object of attack from the beginning to the end of the conflict, and kept at bay the forces that were led against them with a stern determination to win the position. Sunlight gave way to the twilight of a July evening, and dense darkness at last covered the combatants, but still the fight went on. Columns of the enemy charged in such close and rapid succession that the British artillerymen were constantly assailed in the very act of sponging and loading their guns. The assailants once won the height, but only to find themselves repulsed the next instant by the resolute daring of the British. Happily at the most critical moment, when the defenders of the hill were almost exhausted by the heroic struggle, reinforcements arrived, and the battle was renewed with a supreme effort on both sides. For three hours longer, from nine o’clock to midnight, the battle was fought in the darkness, only relieved by the unceasing flashes from the guns, whose sharp reports mingled with the deep and monotonous roar of the great falls. It was a scene worthy of a painter whose imagination could grasp all the incidents of a situation essentially dramatic in its nature. The assailants of the Canadian position gave way at last and withdrew their wearied and disheartened forces. It was in all respects a victory for England and Canada, since the United States army did not attempt to renew the battle on the next day, but retired to Fort Erie, then in their possession. As Canadians look down “the corridors of time,” they will always see those flashes from the musketry and cannon