Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
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17. Thomas B. Akins, History of Halifax City (Halifax, N.S.: n.p., 1895), pp. 5–11. Faragher, pp. 249–51.
18. Faragher, p. 252.
19. Faragher, p. 344.
20. Faragher, pp. 354, 359.
21. Faragher, p. 357.
22. John Bartlet Brebner, The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia: A Marginal Colony during the Revolutionary Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), p. 94.
23. Planter Nova Scotia has been the subject of several edited volumes: see, e.g., Margaret Conrad, ed., Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Fredericton, N.B.: Acadiensis Press, 1991).
24. John Robinson and Thomas Rispin, Journey through Nova-Scotia (Sackville, N.B.: Ralph Pickard Bell Library, Mount Allison University, 1981; repr. York, 1774).
25. The Micmac population in 1780 has been estimated at three thousand. Philip K. Bock, “Micmac,” in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians vol. 15, The Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), p. 117.
26. Jacob Bailey, “A journal containing a variety of incidents,” June 21, 1779, PANS: Jacob Bailey Fonds, MG 1 (reel 14900), vol. IV, pp. 4–6, 19–30. Parts of this journal are reproduced in William S. Bartlet, The Frontier Missionary: A Memoir of the Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, A.M. (Boston: Ide and Dutton, 1853).
27. Bailey, “A journal containing a variety of incidents,” June 21, 1779, PANS: Jacob Bailey Fonds, MG 1 (reel 14900), vol. V, p. 10.
28. Bartlet, pp. 168–69.
29. Jacob Bailey to Benjamin Palmer, June 24, 1779, PANS: Jacob Bailey Fonds, MG 1 (reel 14900), item 26, pp. 9–10.
30. Bailey to Major Godwin, June 25, 1779, PANS: Jacob Bailey Fonds, MG 1 (reel 14900), item 26, p. 21.
31. Akins, pp. 75–76.
32. Proceedings of Nova Scotia Council, October 9 to December 23, 1776, NA: CO 217/53, f. 94.
33. Samuel Rogers to Joseph Taylor, June 27, 1776, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 1.
34. Elizabeth Mancke, The Fault Lines of Empire: Political Differentiation in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, 1760–1830 (New York, Routledge, 2005), pp. 87–94.
35. Mancke, p. 78.
36. “Fragment of a journal of journey to Cornwallis, 1779,” August 16, 1779, PANS: Jacob Bailey Fonds, MG 1 (reel 14900), item 27.
37. There are three major studies of revolutionary Nova Scotia. Brebner’s classic The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia stresses the province’s isolation and commercial ties to Britain as reasons for neutrality (see esp. chapter 10). Gordon Stewart and George Rawlyk point to the significance of the Great Awakening in turning “Yankees” into “Nova Scotians”: Gordon Stewart and George Rawlyk, A People Highly Favored of God: The Nova Scotia Yankees and the American Revolution (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972). Elizabeth Mancke’s Fault Lines of Empire argues that Nova Scotian loyalism emanated from the divergent political cultures of Nova Scotia and New England (see esp. chapter 4).
38. MacKinnon, p. 11.
39. John Parr to Charles Grey, quoted in Brebner, p. 352, and MacKinnon, p. 12.
40. Parr to Townshend, October 26, 1782, NA: CO 217/56, f. 2.
41. Parr to Townshend, February 20, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 61.
42. Parr to Townshend, January 15, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 60. The Minute Book of the Port Roseway Association lists 1,507 subscribers to the scheme for 1783. LAC: Shelburne, Nova Scotia Collection, Microfilm H-984, pp. 3–23.
43. Parr to Lord Sydney, June 6 and August 23, 1783, September 30, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, ff. 89, 93, 98.
44. Parr to Sydney, November 20, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 115.
45. “A General Description of the Province of Nova Scotia … done by Lieutenant Colonel Morse Chief Engineer in America, upon a Tour of the Province in the Autumn of the year 1783, and the summer 1784. Under the Orders and Instructions of His Excellency Sir Guy Carleton … Given at Head Quarters at New York the 28th Day of July 1783,” LAC: Robert Morse Fonds, f. 44.
46. For estimates of black migrants, see James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 32, 40. Walker’s portrayal of free blacks as “black loyalists” has attracted a sharp critique from Barry Cahill, “The Black Loyalist Myth in Atlantic Canada,” Acadiensis 29, no. 1 (Autumn 1999): 76–87. On loyalist-owned slaves, see Harvey Amani Whitfield, “The American Background of Loyalist Slaves,” Left History 14, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2009): 58–87.
47. S. S. Blowers to Ward Chipman, September 23, 1783, LAC: Chipman Fonds, Microfilm C-1179, p. 95.
48. Blowers to Chipman, November 8, 1783, LAC: Chipman Fonds, Microfilm C-1179, p. 102.
49. Edward Winslow to Chipman, November 19, 1783, LAC: Chipman Fonds, Microfilm C-1180, p. 1314.
50. Edward Winslow to Chipman, January 1, 1784, LAC: Chipman Fonds, Microfilm C-1180, p. 1327.
51. “A General Description,” LAC: Robert Morse Fonds, pp. 11–15, 26–32, 34–36.
52. Quoted in Bartlet, p. 193. Bailey estimated the population to be 120 at the time of his arrival (Bartlet, p. 192).
53. Parr to Lord North, November 20, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 115.
54. Parr to Sydney, July 26, 1784, NA: CO 217/59, f. 193.
55. Proceedings of Nova Scotia Council, July 2, 1779, to March 11, 1780, NA: CO 216/55, f. 20.
56. Samuel Seabury to Colonel North, London, July 21, 1783, NA: CO 217/35, f. 333.
57. Major General John Campbell to Lord North, January 1, 1784, NA: CO 217/41, f. 35.
58. “General Return of all the Disbanded Troops and other Loyalists who have lately become Settlers in the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, made up from the Rolls taken by the several Muster Masters,” Halifax, November 4, 1784, NA: CO 217/41, ff. 163–64.
59. Campbell to Lord North, April 1, 1784, NA: CO 217/41, ff. 63 and 65.
60. Sydney to Campbell, June 7, 1784, NA: CO 217/41, ff. 89–90.
61. Parr to Lord North, September 30, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 98. For a list of escheats see Parr to Sydney, June 3, 1786, NA: CO 217/58, f. 159.
62. Wentworth to Lt. Jonathan Davidson, November 27, 1783, PANS: Letterbook of Sir John Wentworth, 1783–1808, RG 1, vol. 49 (reel 15237), p. 17.
63. Wentworth to Grey Elliott, April 10, 1784, and Wentworth to Commissioners of the Navy, April 16, 1786, PANS: Letterbook of Sir John Wentworth, 1783–1808, RG 1, vol. 49 (reel 15237), p. 32 and no page.
64. Faragher, pp. 288–90; Akins, p. 10.
65. MacKinnon, pp. 13–14, 21–23, 96.
66. Bailey to Dr. William Morice, November 6, 1783, quoted in Bartlet, p. 196.
67. Diary of Henry Nase, December 25, 1783, NBM, p. 19.
68. “Hannah Ingraham Recalls the Snowy Reception at Fredericton,” in Catherine S. Crary, ed., The Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 402.
69. D. G. Bell, Early Loyalist Saint John: The Origin of New Brunswick Politics, 1783–1786 (Fredericton: New Ireland Press, 1983), p. 63.
70. Overseers of the Poor of Halifax to Governor Parr, n.d., 1784, PANS: Phyllis R. Blakeley Fonds, MG 1, vol. 3030.
71. “A General Description,” LAC: Robert Morse Fonds, pp. 41–44.
72. Winslow to Chipman, April 26, 1784, LAC: Ward Chipman Fonds, pp. 1335–36.
73. Brook Watson to Evan Nepean, March 3, 1784, NA: CO 217/56, f. 380.
74. The definitive history of this settlement is Marion Robertson, King’s Bounty: A History of Early Shelburne Nova Scotia (Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, 1983). A popular account is provided by Stephen Kimber, Loyalists and Layabouts: The Rapid Rise and Faster Fall of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, 1783–1792 (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008).
75. Diary of Benjamin Marston, November 24, 1776, http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/marston/marston3.html, accessed November 28, 2009. The entirety of Marston’s diary is available online: up to 1778 in the electronic transcript cited above, and from 1778 onw
ard in page images through the Winslow Papers, vols. 20–22: http://www.lib.unb.ca/winslow/browse.html, accessed November 28, 2009. (Henceforth cited as Marston Diary.)
76. Marston Diary, December 13–30, 1781, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 21, pp. 138–42.
77. Marston Diary, September 8, 1782, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 57.
78. Marston Diary, April 21–May 3, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 70–72.
79. Joseph Durfee, report on meeting with Sir Guy Carleton, March 24, 1783, LAC: Shelburne, Nova Scotia Collection, Microfilm H-984, pp. 94–95.
80. Marston Diary, May 24, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 81–82.
81. Marston Diary, May 16, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 76–77.
82. Marston Diary, May 16 and June 9, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 77, 89–90.
83. Marston Diary, May 26 and June 4, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 83, 87.
84. Marston Diary, May 8, 1783, and May 18, 1784, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 74, 153.
85. Marston Diary, May 21 and May 29, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 80, 84.
86. Marston Diary, August 2, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 103.
87. Benjamin Marston to Edward Winslow, February 6, 1784, in William Odber Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, A.D. 1776–1826 (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), p. 164.
88. Marston Diary, July 22 and July 20, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 100–101.
89. A 1791 census put the Halifax population at just 4,897, though this represented a decline from the population of 1784 (Akins, p. 103). Several musters place the Shelburne population in 1784 at around eight thousand, including the fifteen hundred free blacks.
90. Parr to Lord Shelburne, December 16, 1783, NA: CO 217/56, f. 126.
91. Marston Diary, January 19, 1784, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 141.
92. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George …,” in Vincent Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 337.
93. Marston Diary, August 28, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 111.
94. “Persons Victualled at Shelburne the 8th January 1784,” PANS: Negro and Maroon Settlements, RG 1, vol. 419 (reel 15460), p. 108. The August 1784 muster shows 1,521 “negroes” at Shelburne: “Those Mustered at Shelburne, NS in the Summer of 1784….,” LAC: Shelburne, Nova Scotia Collection, Microfilm H-984, vol. 3, p. 4.
95. “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King,” in Carretta, ed., p. 356.
96. Marston Diary, June 19, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 92.
97. Luke 8:5–8.
98. “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King,” in Carretta, ed., pp. 356–58.
99. Parr to Nepean, January 22, 1783, NA: CO 217/59, f. 14.
100. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George,” in Carretta, ed., pp. 336–37.
101. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George,” in Carretta, ed., p. 337.
102. Walker, p. 40.
103. “A General Description,” LAC: Robert Morse Fonds LAC: Robert Morse Fonds, p. 69.
104. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George,” in Carretta, ed., p. 338.
105. Parr to Evan Nepean, April 11, 1784, NA: CO 217/59, f. 105.
106. Marston Diary, September 19, 1783, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 118–19.
107. Marston Diary, July 26–27 and August 4, 1784, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 157–59.
Chapter Six: Loyal Americas
1. Lord Sydney to John Parr, March 8, 1785, NA: CO 217/57, ff. 28–29.
2. Edward Winslow to Ward Chipman, April 26, 1784, AO: Ward Chipman Papers, Microfilm C-1180, ff. 1343–44. Winslow must have been referring to an earlier letter of Sydney’s that used much the same formulation as the March 1785 text quoted above. The Winslow Papers, the richest collection of personal papers on loyalist settlement in the Maritimes, are available online through the University of New Brunswick Library: http://www.lib.unb.ca/winslow, accessed December 24, 2009.
3. The best account of the partition movement is provided by Ann Gorman Condon, The Envy of the American States: The Loyalist Dream for New Brunswick (Fredericton, N.B.: New Ireland Press, 1984), pp. 97–120. Winslow laid out the scheme in full in his letter to Chipman of April 26, 1784, cited above.
4. Condon, pp. 112–19.
5. Cf. Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 1. As will become clear below, however, I disagree with Lipset’s reductionist understanding of the United States as “the country of revolution, Canada of the counterrevolution.”
6. For this influential narrative of Canadian history, see Ian McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 3 (December 2000): 617–45; and the valuable volume of critical essays edited by Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme, Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). On the loyalists’ foundational role in the liberal order, see the insightful contribution of Jerry Bannister, “Canada as Counter-Revolution: The Loyalist Order Framework in Canadian History, 1750–1840,” in Constant and Ducharme, eds., pp. 98–146.
7. Winslow to Sir John Wentworth, December 26, 1784, Winslow Papers, p. 260. On the progress of building in the city, see D. G. Bell, Early Loyalist Saint John: The Origin of New Brunswick Politics, 1783–1786 (Fredericton, N.B.: New Ireland Press, 1983), pp. 48–49.
8. Quoted in “Thomas Carleton,” q.v., Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca, accessed December 24, 2009.
9. In contrast to his prolific and well-archived brother, Thomas Carleton produced little documentation—that survives at least—to help flesh out his personality and career. But a short précis Carleton wrote of his military service is reproduced in the New Brunswick Magazine, vol. 2 (Saint John, N.B.: William Kilby Reynolds, 1899), pp. 75–76. See also “Thomas Carleton,” q.v., Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca, accessed December 24, 2009.
10. The original candidate for the position was General Henry Fox, brother of Charles James Fox and leading advocate for the partition of Nova Scotia; but Fox declined the post for personal and political reasons. Esther Clark Wright, The Loyalists of New Brunswick (Fredericton, N.B.: n.p., 1955), p. 139.
11. William Odber Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, A.D. 1776–1826 (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), p. 251; Beamish Murdoch, A History of Nova Scotia, or Acadie, 3 vols. (Halifax, N.S.: James Barnes, 1867), III, pp. 38–39; Bell, pp. 94–95.
12. Winslow to Chipman, July 7, 1783, in Raymond, ed., p. 100.
13. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, February 12, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
14. Instructions to Thomas Carleton, n.d., NA: CO 188/1, f. 90.
15. Marston Diary, January 18, 1785, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, p. 177.
16. “Hannah Ingraham Recalls the Snowy Reception at Fredericton,” in Catherine S. Crary, ed., Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 402.
17. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, April 25, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
18. Beverley Robinson Jr., “Receipt and Memorandum Book begun 24th Decr 1783,” p. 75, NBM: Robinson Family Papers, Box 1, Folder 3.
19. See chapter 5, n. 2. For the New Brunswick response, see Condon, pp. 89–90.
20. Quoted in Bell, p. 65.
21. Quoted in Bell, p. 74.
22. Winslow to Wentworth, December 26, 1784, in Raymond, ed., p. 260. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, June 25, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
23. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, June 25, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
24. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, October 25, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook; Bell, p. 57.
25. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, Novemb
er 20, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
26. Marston Diary, July 24 and November 17, 1785, UNB: Winslow Papers, vol. 22, pp. 189–90, 204–5.
27. Bell, pp. 104–5.
28. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, November 20, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
29. Bell, p. 112.
30. Bell, pp. 113, 148–49.
31. Bell, p. 151.
32. Bell, p. 117.
33. Sydney to Thomas Carleton, April 19, 1786, NA: CO 188/3, ff. 189–90.
34. Thomas Carleton to Sydney, November 20, 1785, PANB: Thomas Carleton Letterbook.
35. On this theme see Jack P. Greene, ed., Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010), esp. Philip Girard, “Liberty, Order, and Pluralism: The Canadian Experience,” pp. 160–90.
36. Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet 32, no. 36 (December 13, 1817): cols. 1148–50. See also Bell, pp. 130–31, 142–44.
37. Cobbett was a notoriously unreliable autobiographer. See David A. Wilson, Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection (Kingston, Ont.: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1988), esp. (for New Brunswick) pp. 99–105.
38. Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 112–13.
39. Quoted in Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972), p. 260.
40. Quoted in Taylor, p. 113.
41. The site had originally been dubbed “Loyal Confederate Valley” in June 1782. Graymont, p. 254.
42. Quoted in Taylor, p. 113.
43. “Abstract of poor Refugee Loyalists that stand in need of Clothing,” [1783] BL: Add. Mss. 21822, f. 62. Another document reckoned that the government needed to supply 3,204 pairs of stockings and “Canadian shoes” (a set for each loyalist), and sixteen thousand yards of linen and wool to clothe the refugees. “Estimate of clothing required to Clothe the above number of Refugees, agreeable to the Proportions heretofore granted,” BL: Add. Mss. 21826, f. 103. On the travails of Quebec refugees, see Janice Potter-MacKinnon, While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1993).