44. Memorandum, Montreal, March 6, 1782, BL: Add. Mss. 21825, f. 5.
45. Robert Mathews to Abraham Cuyler, November 18, 1782, BL: Add. Mss. 21825, f. 25.
46. Petition by “His Majesty’s Faithful Subjects Emigrated Under the Conduct of Captain Michael Grass from New York to this place,” Sorel, September 29, 1783, BL: Add. Mss. 21825, ff. 147–48.
47. Stephen Delancey to Mathews, April 26 and May 4, 1784, BL: Add. Mss. 21825, ff. 233–35.
48. Daniel Claus to General Haldimand, December 15, 1783, BL: Add. Mss. 21774, ff. 344–45.
49. Haldimand to Claus, December 17, 1783, BL: Add. Mss. 21774, f. 346.
50. “Return of disbanded Troops & Loyalists settled upon the King’s Lands in the Province of Quebec in the Year 1784,” BL: Add. Mss. 21828, f. 141.
51. Haldimand to Sir John Johnson, May 26, 1783, BL: Add. Mss. 21775, f. 122. Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1984), p. 350.
52. Alan Taylor observes that the Mohawks were “the exception that proved the rule” about British neglect of Indian allies (p. 120). I would suggest that British perceptions of Mohawks as loyalists was what accounted for that difference.
53. Kelsay, pp. 366–67; Stone, pp. 243–45.
54. Kelsay, pp. 345–46.
55. Copy of grant by Haldimand, AO: Simcoe Family Papers, F-47–1-1 (MS 1797).
56. Quoted in William L. Stone, Life of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1865), II, p. 253.
57. Joseph Brant to Sydney, January 4, 1786, quoted in Stone, II, pp. 252–53.
58. Stone, II, pp. 259–60.
59. Sydney to Brant, April 6, 1786, quoted in Stone, II, pp. 255–56.
60. Kelsay, pp. 385–91.
61. John Stuart to William White, September 4, 1788, LAC: John Stuart Papers, pp. 46–47.
62. Stuart to White, September 4, 1788, LAC: John Stuart Papers, pp. 46–47.
63. Isaac Weld, Travels through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London: John Stockdale, 1800), pp. 485–89.
64. Taylor, p. 123; Kelsay, pp. 370–71.
65. Brant to Samuel Kirkland, March 8, 1791, AO: Simcoe Family Papers, Series F-47–1-1.
66. Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester: Soldier-Statesman of Early British Canada (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 174–76.
67. Quoted in Nelson, p. 184.
68. Nelson, pp. 176–87; Condon, pp. 118–19. He did not get the title of governor-general, reflecting the wariness British ministers retained about creating such a powerful position.
69. William Smith, The Diaries and Selected Papers of Chief Justice William Smith, ed. L. F. S. Upton, 2 vols. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1963), II, p. 105.
70. William Smith estimated the population of Quebec at 130,000 in 1788 (Nelson, p. 209). According to the 1790 U.S. census, New York State had 340,241 residents.
71. Nelson, pp. 208–9.
72. Diaries of William Smith, II, p. 163.
73. “Report of the Council Committee on Education,” in Diaries of William Smith, II, p. 266; Nelson, p. 205.
74. For a nuanced picture of Anglo–French Canadian relations in this period, see Donald Fyson, Magistrates, Police, and People: Everyday Criminal Justice in Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764–1837 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
75. Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784–1841 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), pp. 13–19. For the text of the act, see Adam Shortt and Arthur C. Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759–1791 (Ottawa: S. E. Dawson, 1907), pp. 694–708. On the authoritarian turn, see C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989).
76. Fox criticized the bill’s creation of an aristocracy and mocked Burke’s sympathy for an institution that had been eliminated in France. Burke passionately insisted that he would uphold his defense of British constitutionalism to the end of his life, and “with his last words exclaim, ‘Fly from the French constitution!’ ” Fox was heard to mutter that “there was no loss of friends,” to which Burke responded “Yes, there was a loss of friends …—their friendship was at an end.” Fox rose to speak, “but his mind was so much agitated, and his heart so much affected by what had fallen from Mr. Burke, that it was some minutes before he could proceed. Tears trickled down his cheeks.” Debate of May 6, 1791, The Parliamentary History of England (London: T. C. Hansard, 1817), vol. 29, columns 359–430, esp. 387–88.
77. At the risk of falling into semantic debate, I should note that my understanding of this act conforms to the use of “counter-revolution” put forward by Eliga Gould, “American Independence and Britain’s Counter-Revolution,” Past & Present 154 (February 1997): 107–41; Eliga Gould, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution,” in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 196–213; and Bannister, “Canada as Counter-Revolution.”
78. Quoted in Elizabeth Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Kingston, Ont.: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1987), p. 30.
79. Diaries of William Smith, II, p. 163.
80. William Smith to Lord Dorchester, February 5, 1790, in Diaries of William Smith, II, pp. 270–76.
81. McKay, pp. 632–33. See also Phillip A. Buckner, The Transition to Reponsible Government: British Policy in British North America, 1815–1850 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985). A response to the 1837–38 Canadian rebellions, the union of the Canadas also resembled the union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, as another attempt to contain a recently rebellious Catholic population within a Protestant polity.
82. Nelson, pp. 211–15.
83. For this characterization of Simcoe’s policies, see, among others, Errington, chapter 2; Craig, pp. 20–22.
84. Quoted in Jeffrey L. McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791–1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 23.
85. Craig, pp. 20–22.
86. Quoted in Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott, John Graves Simcoe, 1752–1806: A Biography (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1998), p. 121. J. Ross Robertson, ed., The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe (Toronto: William Briggs, 1911), p. 180.
87. Diary of Mrs. Simcoe, pp. 121–63.
88. Diary of Mrs. Simcoe, pp. 180–84.
89. Quoted in Errington, p. 31.
90. Craig, p. 35; Diary of Mrs. Simcoe, pp. 184–200; Fryer and Dracott, pp. 162–63.
91. On shifts in the meaning of loyalism see David Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784–1850 (Kingston, Ont.: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1988); Norman Knowles, Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
92. Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 5.
93. Taylor, “Late Loyalists,” pp. 5–6.
94. Diary of Mrs. Simcoe, pp. 136–39.
95. Elizabeth Jane Errington, “British Migration and British America,” in Phillip Buckner, ed., Canada and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 140–46. Up to the U.S. Civil War, the primary destination for British immigrants to North America continued to be the United States.
96. The British traveler Isaac Weld (an enthusiastic proponent of immigration to Canada) noted that “it is a fact worthy of notice, which banishes every suspicion relative to the diminution of the inhabitants by emigrations into the States, that great numbers of people actually emigrate into Canada annually, whilst none of the Canadians, who have it in their power to dispose of their property, emigrate into the United
States, except, indeed, a few of those who have resided in the towns.” (Weld, p. 287.) The white population of Upper Canada doubled from about seven thousand (largely refugees) in 1784 to fourteen thousand in 1791, and then multiplied fivefold to seventy thousand between 1791 and 1811. To the extent that loyalist refugees moved back to the United States (and I have found no evidence to suggest that they did so in large numbers), returnees in no way compromised provincial growth. Taylor, “Late Loyalists,” pp. 4, 19.
97. I draw my interpretation of Upper Canada as an “American” province from the illuminating work of Elizabeth Jane Errington: see esp. The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, chapter 3. For a case study in how imperial rule could appeal to a quintessential early U.S. individualist, see J. I. Little, “American Sinner/Canadian Saint?” in Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 203–31.
98. Stuart to White, September 8, 1788, AO: John Stuart Papers, p. 46.
99. Taylor, “Late Loyalists,” p. 7.
100. Egerton Ryerson, The Loyalists of America and Their Times: From 1620 to 1816, 2 vols. (Toronto: William Briggs, 1880), II, p. 474.
101. Stuart to White, October 14, 1783, AO: John Stuart Papers, p. 18.
102. Craig, pp. 28–31.
103. For a suggestive investigation of loyalism and religious culture, see Christopher Adamson, “God’s Divided Continent: Politics and Religion in Upper Canada and the Northern and Western United States, 1775 to 1841,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 2 (July 1994): 417–46.
104. Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1964), p. 91; Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne d’economique et de science politique 32, no. 2 (May 1966): 143–71.
105. Bannister, pp. 102, 126–27. For critiques see also S. F. Wise, “Liberal Consensus or Ideological Battleground: Some Reflections on the Hartz Thesis,” in S. F. Wise, God’s Peculiar Peoples: Essays on Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993), pp. 199–211; Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, eds., Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995).
Chapter Seven: Islands in a Storm
1. John Cruden to Joseph Taylor, November 25, 1786, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 3.
2. [John Cruden], “An Address to the Monarchial and Thinking Part of the British Empire,” [1785], BL: North Papers, Add. Mss., 61864, f. 138; Cruden to Taylor, November 25, 1786, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 3.
3. [John Cruden], “An Address to the Monarchial and Thinking Part of the British Empire,” [1785], BL: North Papers, Add. Mss., 61864, f. 139–47. Cf. John Cruden, An Address to the Loyal Part of the British Empire, and the Friends of Monarchy Throughout the Globe (London, 1785).
4. Cruden to Rev. William Cruden, May 16, 1785, NA: PRO 30/11/7, Cornwallis Papers, Box 7, f. 52.
5. Cruden to Taylor, November 25, 1786, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 3.
6. S. S. Blowers to Taylor, November 7, 1786, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 3.
7. Cruden to Taylor, November 11 and 25, 1786, LOC: Lovering Taylor Papers, Box 3.
8. John Cruden to Rev. William Cruden, May 16, 1785, NA: PRO 30/11/7, Cornwallis Papers, Box 7, f. 52.
9. [John Cruden], “An Address to the Sons of Abraham, Containing thoughts on the Prophecys respecting the restoration of the Jews … by a British American Royalist,” May 16, 1785, NA: PRO 30/11/7, Cornwallis Papers, Box 7, ff. 59–71.
10. Michael Craton, A History of the Bahamas (London: Collins, 1968), pp. 31–34. There is considerable dispute over which island Columbus actually touched first, but conventional wisdom holds that his San Salvador is present-day Watlings Island.
11. Craton, pp. 56–64.
12. Sandra Riley, Homeward Bound: A History of the Bahama Islands to 1850 with a Definitive Study of Abaco in the American Loyalist Plantation Period (Miami: Island Research, 1983), pp. 42–43.
13. Craton, p. 166.
14. For a good contemporary description of the Bahamas, see Johann David Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation [1783–1784], trans. and ed. Alfred J. Morrison, 2 vols. (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1968), II, pp. 259–316.
15. Quoted in Riley, p. 101.
16. Craton, pp. 149–57; Riley, pp. 98–103.
17. Quoted in Riley, p. 131. Firebrand loyalist colonel David Fanning recruited thirty men for the expedition, only to miss the boat when Deveaux sailed without him. David Fanning, The Adventures of David Fanning in the American Revolutionary War, ed. A. W. Savary (Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1983), pp. 60–61.
18. Quoted in Riley, p. 132.
19. See Craton, pp. 160–61; Riley, pp. 131–34; Andrew Deveaux to Sir Guy Carleton, June 6, 1783, NYPL: Carleton Papers, Box 33, no. 7906.
20. Riley, p. 133.
21. The expedition and terms of peace were reported simultaneously in the pages of the East Florida Gazette, May 3, 1783, and in Patrick Tonyn to Lord Sydney, May 15, 1783, NA: CO 5/560, pp. 583–88.
22. Deveaux set an example himself by claiming 250 prime acres of land on New Providence (Craton, p. 161).
23. Returns indicate a total of 1,458 prospective Abaco settlers: Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 4 vols. (London: HMSO, 1904), IV, p. x.
24. Tonyn to Carleton, May 15, 1783, NYPL: Carleton Papers, Box 32, no. 7691.
25. Lewis Johnston to unknown recipient, July 14, 1783, NA: CO 5/560, pp. 928–33. Sir Guy Carleton commissioned a survey of the islands at the same time, which offered somewhat more favorable prospects for the cultivation of cotton in particular (Craton, p. 163).
26. Lord North to Tonyn, December 4, 1783, NA: CO 5/560, p. 724.
27. North to Tonyn, December 4, 1783, NA: CO 5/560, pp. 724–25; Craton, p. 163. The purchase was formally completed in 1787.
28. Like Parr and the Carletons, Maxwell was an Irish Protestant military officer. In 1779 his wealthy wife of three years sought to divorce him, on the grounds that he had never consummated the marriage. A. P. W. Malcolmson, In Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland, 1740–1840 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2006), pp. 74–75.
29. John Maxwell to Sydney, June 19, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 139.
30. In addition to the 1,458 New Yorkers bound for Abaco, 1,033 whites and 2,214 blacks left from East Florida for the Bahamas, according to the “Return of Persons who Emigrated from East Florida to different parts of the British Dominions,” May 2, 1786, NA CO: 5/561, f. 407. See population table in Craton, p. 166.
31. James Powell to Tonyn, June 9, 1785, and Tonyn to Powell, August 25, 1785, in John Walton Caughey, ed., East Florida, 1783–85: A File of Documents Assembled, and Many of Them Translated by Joseph Byrne Lockey (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949), pp. 695–97.
32. Cruden to Maxwell, October 28, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 247–48. Maxwell to Cruden, November 25, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 247–49.
33. Tonyn to Maxwell, May 10, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 133. Maxwell to Tonyn, June 5, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 135.
34. Schoepf, II, pp. 262–64.
35. Riley, p. 143.
36. Arthur McArthur to Sydney, March 1, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 75–76.
37. Maxwell to Sydney, March 29, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 83.
38. “To His Excellency John Maxwell Esq. Captain General Governor and Commander in Chief of the Bahama Islands,” enclosed in Maxwell to Sydney, May 17, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 113–14.
39. Maxwell to Sydney, May 17, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 111.
40. Enclosed in Maxwell to Sydney, June 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 117.
41. Maxwell to Sydney, June 20, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 143.
42. Wilbur Henry Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida, 1774 to 1785: The Most
Important Documents Pertaining Thereto, Edited with an Accompanying Narrative, 2 vols. (Deland: Florida State Historical Society, 1929), I, p. 189.
43. Enclosed in Maxwell to Sydney, June 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 119.
44. Maxwell to Sydney, September 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 172.
45. Maxwell to Sydney, November 20, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 238.
46. Maxwell to Sydney, May 17, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 111.
47. Maxwell to McArthur, June 9, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 141; Maxwell to Sydney, June 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 115.
48. Gail Saunders, Bahamian Loyalists and Their Slaves (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1983), p. 58.
49. The handbill, along with identifications of its signers, is enclosed in Maxwell to Sydney, July 29, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 155, 210.
50. Maxwell to Sydney, September 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 171. On the lawyers’ grievance, see, among others, Stephen Haven to Tonyn, December 6, 1784, in Caughey, ed., pp. 433–34; Maxwell to Sydney, September 4, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 171; Maxwell to Sydney, November 20, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 238.
51. Maxwell to Sydney, September 7, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 178.
52. Maxwell to Sydney, October 9, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 224.
53. Maxwell to Sydney, August 26, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 165.
54. Maxwell to Sydney, September 29, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, f. 188.
55. Sworn testaments to George Bunch, Justice of the Peace, September 29, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 211–12.
56. Maxwell to Sydney, October 15, 1784, NA: CO 23/25, ff. 226–27.
57. [William Wylly], A Short Account of the Bahamas Islands, Their Climate, Productions, &c.… (London, 1789), p. 13. Charles Colcock Jones, The History of Georgia, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), II, p. 420.
58. Powell to Sydney, May 11, 1785, NA: CO 23/25, f. 318.
59. Proceedings of April 4, 1785, Journal of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 12 May 1784 to 29 September 1794, NAB, pp. 28–30.
60. Proceedings of April 26, 1785, Journal of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 12 May 1784 to 29 September 1794, NAB, pp. 42, 45.
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