That nation was to owe its separate existence to the success of the American Revolution.But for that event, coming when it did, the struggling colonies of Quebec and Nova Scotia would in time have become merged with the colonies to the youth and would have followed them, whether they remained within the British Empire or not.Thus it was due to the quarrel between the thirteen colonies and the motherland that Canada did not become merely a fourteenth colony or state.Nor was this the only bearing of the Revolution on Canada's destiny.Thanks to the coming of the Loyalists, those exiles of the Revolution who settled in Canada in large numbers, Canada was after all to be dominantly a land of English speech and of English sympathies.By one of the many paradoxes which mark the history of Canada, the very success of the plan which aimed to save British power by confirming French-Canadian nationality and the loyalty of the French led in the end to making a large part of Canada English.The Revolution meant also that for many a year those in authority in England and in Canada itself were to stand in fear of the principles and institutions which had led the old colonies to rebellion and separation, and were to try to build up in Canada buttresses against the advance of democracy.
The British statesmen who helped to frame the Peace of 1783 were men with broad and generous views as to the future of the seceding colonies and their relations with the mother country.It was perhaps inevitable that they should have given less thought to the future of the colonies in America which remained under the British flag.Few men could realize at the moment that out of these scattered fragments a new nation and a second empire would arise.Not only were the seceding colonies given a share in the fishing grounds of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which was unfortunately to prove a constant source of friction, but the boundary line was drawn with no thought of the need of broad and easy communication between Nova Scotia and Canada, much less between Canada and the far West.Vague definitions of the boundaries, naturally incident to the prevailing lack of geographical knowledge of the vast continent, held further seeds of trouble.These contentions, however, were far in the future.
At the moment another defect of the treaty proved to be Canada's gain.The failure of Lord Shelburne's Ministry to insist upon effective safeguards for the fair treatment of those who had taken the King's side in the old colonies, condemned as it was not only by North and the Tories but by Fox and Sheridan and Burke, led to that Loyalist migration which changed the racial complexion of Canada.
The Treaty of 1783 provided that Congress would "earnestly recommend" to the various States that the Loyalists be granted amnesty and restitution.This pious resolution proved not worth the paper on which it was written.In State after State the property of the Loyalists was withheld or confiscated anew.Yet this ungenerous treatment of the defeated by the victors is not hard to understand.The struggle had been waged with all the bitterness of civil war.The smallness of the field of combat had intensified personal ill-will.Both sides had practiced cruelties in guerrilla warfare; but the Patriots forgot Marion's raids, Simsbury mines, and the drumhead hangings, and remembered only Hessian brutalities, Indian scalpings, Tarleton's harryings, and the infamous prison ships of New York.The war had been a long one.The tide of battle had ebbed and flowed.A district that was Patriot one year was frequently Loyalist the next.These circumstances engendered fear and suspicion and led to nervous reprisals.
At least a third, if not a half, of the people of the old colonies had been opposed to revolution.New York was strongly Loyalist, with Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the Carolinas closely following.In the end some fifty or sixty thousand Loyalists abandoned their homes or suffered expulsion rather than submit to the new order.They counted in their ranks many of the men who had held first place in their old communities, men of wealth, of education, and of standing, as well as thousands who had nothing to give but their fidelity to the old order.Many, especially of the well-to-do, went to England; a few found refuge in the West Indies; but the great majority, over fifty thousand in all, sought new homes in the northern wilderness.Over thirty thousand, including many of the most influential of the whole number (with about three thousand negro slaves, afterwards freed and deported to Sierra Leone) were carried by ship to Nova Scotia.They found homes chiefly in that part of the province which in 1784 became New Brunswick.Others, trekking overland or sailing around by the Gulf and up the River, settled in the upper valley of the St.Lawrence--on Lake St.Francis, on the Cataraqui and the Bay of Quinte, and in the Niagara District.
Though these pioneers were generously aided by the British Government with grants of land and supplies, their hardships and disappointments during the first years in the wilderness were such as would have daunted any but brave and desperate men and women whom fate had winnowed.Yet all but a few, who drifted back to their old homes, held out; and the foundations of two more provinces of the future Dominion--New Brunswick and Upper Canada--were thus broadly and soundly laid by the men whom future generations honored as "United Empire Loyalists." Through all the later years, their sacrifices and sufferings, their ideals and prejudices, were to make a deep impress on the development of the nation which they helped to found and were to influence its relations with the country which they had left and with the mother country which had held their allegiance.
