Historical Background

Historical Background

Canada Before the American Revolution

By the Treaty of Paris which ended the Seven Years War, New France was ceded by old France to Great Britain, who had conquered the key sites in the territory.  This gave the British control of all North America north of the Spanish possessions which today would be Florida, Mexico, Texas and the US southwest.

Unlike the thirteen colonies to the south and the east coast colonies of Nova Scotia, Ile St. Jean (PEI) and Newfoundland, the new territory, which the British named Quebec, was populated by non-British Europeans - specifically the farmers and working class people that had been left behind when the elite of New France returned to Europe.  This population spoke French and were Roman Catholic.  At this time, Catholics were much discriminated against in Britain being denied, amongst other things, the right to participate in elections. 

Recognizing this, Sir Guy Carleton did not carry out orders from Britain to create an elected assembly for the new province.  Knowing that the vast majority would not be allowed to participate and that the power would fall into the hands of a few English merchants, Carleton felt that such a move would lead to significant unrest and he had only a few troops to police the vast territory.   Thus Quebec was the only British territory with no representative government.  

Further, Carleton determined to keep French civil law operating in the colony.  This ensured that no one would be dispossessed of their land by a switch to English law with which the populace would be unfamiliar and that inheritance would continue as it had in the past for the Canadiens.  

The people of Quebec were not dissatisfied with their lot in life.  Unlike New France, which was a military colony requiring the farmers to provide food to the army without compensation, the British paid for what they ate and the Canadiens had a prosperity they did not before know.  The vast majority of people lived on farms which bordered the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers.  The government resided in Quebec City and Montreal was the focus of the fur trade as well as the most westerly point of transportation due to the rough nature of the upper St. Lawrence.

Quebec stretched to the west as far as the Great Lakes and then south along the Mississippi, though this was contested by the 13 colonies who saw no real limit to their western boundaries.  

With many more developed colonies to attract people, there was little expectation that Quebec had much growth in its future.  Sir Guy Carleton wrote in 1767 ‘the country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the Canadian race, who have already taken such firm root, and got to so great a height that any new stock transplanted will be totally hid, except in the towns of Quebec and Montreal.”


The Thirteen British Colonies Before the Revolution

Today, we think of Britain and the United States as two separate countries with much common culture but very distinct political societies.  To understand the situation before 1776, we must remember that they were one and the same country - the Kingdom of Great Britain.  Everyone was a subject of the king and the rule of the parliament in London extended effectively across the Atlantic.  

The breech which came about in the 18th century should be understood, not as a battle between two sovereign nations, but as a civil war within the confines of a single kingdom.  It pitted neighbour against neighbour and son against father.  There was no line of demarkation between the sides.  Those for and against the king lived in the same communities and shared the same social spaces.  The enemy wasn’t “over there.”  He was right next door.

The split was brought about by a number of points of friction between the colonists and the metropolitan government, many caused by legislation passed by Parliament and supported by the King.  You can read further about this here.  Supporters of the King were referred to as Tories (though they would have called themselves Loyalists).  Those who opposed the British government, and eventually revolted were known as Whigs.  There were Whigs in Britain who supported the colonists (though not to the point of breaking from the empire) and there were Tories in England who supported the Loyalists.

Initially, the colonists did not seek to create a separate country.  Their goal was to reverse government actions that they felt oppressed them.  The first Continental Congress specifically repudiated the idea.  Benjamin Franklin told the British PM Lord Chatham ‘that he had never heard in America one word in favour of independence from any person, drunk or sober.”

The population of the thirteen colonies at the time was around three million people.  John Adams, after the revolution, estimated that a third were Loyalists (Tories).  Before 1774, many of them sympathized with the desire to change British policy.  But as protest moved to revolution, thousands of these people took arms up to support the cause of the King.   

The divisions between Tories and Whigs was not a matter of class.  People like Washington, Adams and Jefferson on one side opposed equally prominent people like Sir John Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson and Joseph Galloway.  Most of the people under arms on both sides were of a lower economic position.  Religious affiliation is a more likely indicator of political sentiment with Church of England congregation more likely to support the king and Presbyterians more likely to favour revolution.  But there were exceptions on all sides.  Those who’s livelihoods depended upon the government such as royal officers and CofE clerrgymen were most likely Tories while land speculators and merchants were more likely Whigs.

Sentiment also differed from colony to colony.  “New York and Pennsylvania,” wrote John Adams years afterwards, “were so nearly divided - if the propensity was not against us [Whigs] - that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British.”  Georgia, also, was strongly Tory.


Impact of the Rebellion on Loyalists in America

Loyalists in rebellious colonies suffered from persecution by both official and unofficial parties.  Representative bodies such as the Continental Congress and those of individual states enacted policies targeting Tories.  Mobs of Whigs took matters into their own hands to persecute their neighbours who supported the king.

States (as the rebellious colonies now called themselves) confiscated the property of those supporting the King, especially those taking up arms in that cause.  These properties were then sold off to raise money to support the rebellious governments.  In 1776, the Constitutional Congress recommended the disarming of Tories which was carried out by local committees who acted against their suspect neighbours.

After the Declaration of Independence, Test Laws required everyone to swear allegiance to the  state in which they lived and denounce any allegiance to the King.  To refuse to swear was to become liable to imprisonment, confiscation of property, banishment or possibly even death.  Such people were outlaws who could find no redress with the authorities or the courts.

Groups of local citizens sacked private houses of Loyalists.  They stole and destroyed property and sent the occupants fleeing in fear for their lives.  Loyalist clergymen were stopped at gunpoint from preaching.  The mob also attacked businesses owned by Loyalists, especially printing presses the had done work for the royal governments. Loyalists who chose to stay in their homes were often tarred and feathered by the Revolutionary neighbours.  In New York, the Congress ordered enough supplies to support these actions as an act of public safety.

In response to the rebellion and to attacks on their persons and property, Loyalists organized.  The majority of these people took refuge within the British lines during the fighting.  


The Loyalists Fight Back

After 1776, Loyalists began to form their own regiments to fight on the side of the King.  These groups were generally made up of well-to-do gentlemen, often with experience fighting in the Seven Years War, leading groups of local citizens, some retired soldiers and many dependents of the leaders.  

In the Carolinas, Tarletons’ Loyal Cavalry were a major menace to the revolutionaries until they were defeated at Cowpens.  In New York, Governor Tyron’s troop swept through the Hudson River and raided Connecticut and New Jersey.  Unfortunately, these irregular troops were not thought well of by the military authorities from Britain responsible for strategy.  Thus their actions were uncoordinated and any success not exploited.  They were thus left to raiding exercises which could be easily characterized as barbaric attacks by the enemy.

Of most interest to our story of Ontario are the troops raised by Sir John Johnson.  When forced to flee north from attacks on his estate which did not bode well for his future health, Sir John took with him three hundred Scottish who had settled on his lands in New York.  These became the nucleus of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York which Sir John commanded.  Supporters and friends of Sir John Johnson also raised regiments and worked alongside him.  These included Alexander Macdonell who led a group of Highlander and German immigrants against the Revolution.  Sir Allan Maclean, a Scottish officer in the English army worked with Sir John’s brother-in-law Colonel Guy Johnson to raise a regiment of Royald Highland Emigrants.  Colonel John Butler raised Butler’s Rangers who were particularly good at using native warfare methods to harass the Revolutionaries.  Most famously, Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader and friend of Sir John raised a group of Mohawk troops.

Most of Johnson’s troops and those of his close allies ended up settling in what would become Upper Canada.  Sir John and many got land along the St. Lawrence.  Colonel Butler’s people ended up in Niagara.  Joseph Brant and the Mohawks received a large tract of land along the Grand River in what was then the far west of the province.


The Loyalist Struggle After the War

When the British General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, it was immediately obvious that the colonists who supported the king were not welcome.  Washington refused to treat with loyalist regiments as he had with the British regular army.  The animus that had built up over two decades was not just going to fade away.

In the treaty negotiations, the British took up the cause of the Loyalists demanding that they be made whole for their losses and their property returned.  But the American negotiators such as Benjamin Franklin claimed that the continental congress had no right to bind the individual states to such a policy.  They did agree to urge the states to curtail any future confiscations and earnestly recommend a policy of restitution.  No real urging nor earnest recommendations ever actually occurred.

Meanwhile, individual states continued to persecute the Loyalists, now sure of their ground as internationally recognized governments.  New York canceled all debts owing to Loyalists on condition that one fortieth of the amount be paid to the state treasury.  Virginia had already passed a resolution in 1782 declaring demands for restitution inadmissible.  Loyalists were left with no standing at all in the States, even less than foreigners.  

Loyalists seeking to return and take up their old lives were more likely to be met by tar and feathers than local acceptance.  Worse, though they were unable to pursue legal redress in American courts, Americans were able to pursue Loyalists in British courts.


The Loyalists Head North

The colonial and military powers of Britain in North America sought to help the refugees to leave the new United States.  Sir Guy Carleton, Governor General of British North America, continued to maintain forces in New York to receive refugees and transport them north.  The American authorities complained about Carleton’s delay in evacuating their new country claiming that it violated the agreement of the surrender and negotiations.  Carleton replied  that “he held the opposite views; and that in any case it was a point of honour with him that  no troops should embark until the last person who claimed his protection should be safely on board a British ship.”

As had happened with the French after the Seven Years War, many of the elite of Loyalist colonists returned to Europe - royal officials, wealthy merchants, professional men and military officers.  Most everyone else became a refugee, obtaining passage to places in North America where the British flag still flew.  About one hundred did end up in the Caribbean and some stalwarts did stay in the United States despite the unwelcome atmosphere.


Maritime Provinces

At this time, the Canadian east coast consisted of the provinces of Nova Scotia (which included what is now New Brunswick), Isle St. John (the French province of Ile St. Jean, now PEI) and Newfoundland.  By the end of 1783, 30,000 refugees came to Nova Scotia.  Some of them later ended up in Upper Canada.  Others went on to England.  Some, in later years, returned to a less unpleasant United States.  Overall, the province increased its population by 35,000.  3,000 settled in Cape Breton.  

Many built new homes on the shore of the Bay of Fundy and up the St. John River.  Unhappy with lack of support from the Governor of Nova Scotia, they complained to the Governor General and influential friends in England.  This resulted in the creation of a new colony - New Brunswick.


Quebec

By 1783, more than one thousand refugees had come north and were housed at Machiche and other places.  These were largely women and children and men not able to take up the sword.  Including Loyalists Regiments who harboured in the south of Quebec, there  were likely 3,000 before the war ended.  By 1784, this had risen to 7,000.

Some were settled in Sorel, a seigneury that had been bought by the crown.  Otherws ended up in the Gaspé peninsula.  By the start of the First World War, Sir Guy Carleton’s prediction of transplanting in Quebec had come true.  These colonies had become absorbed by the French Canadian culture around them. 

Loyalists wanted to settled in the Eastern Townships near the Vermont border.  But the new Governor Genrral, Sir Frederick Haldimand, would not allow it, fearing it to carry the potential of reigniting the fighting.  


The Creation of Upper Canada

In 1784, the bulk of the refugees in Quebec were resettled to the sparsely populated west on the St. Lawrence above Montreal and the Bay of Quinte area as well as Niagara and the Detroit River.  Some, such as Butler’s Rangers, did go to Niagara which already had some population who had fled Pennsylvania.  It prospered and became the home of the provincial capital.  Few chose to go so far west as Detroit.

The majority chose the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario lands.  In 1783, Major Lolland was sent to survey five townships bordering the Bay of Quinte.  In 1784, he surveyed 8 more along Lake Ontario and the banks of the St. Lawrence.  Originally, these townships were given numbers rather than names.  They were divided into 200 acre lots and included a town site which was divided into smaller lots.  

Refugees came from Mahiche, Sorel and St. Johns via bateaux up river.  The groups were settled, for the most part, by the people associated with various loyalist units.  Protestant and Roman Catholic members of units were settled separately.  Sir John Johnson was appointed superintendent of this effort.

The First battalion of Sir John’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York was settled on the first five townships closest to existing settlements on the St. Lawrence.  Most of these were Scottish families from the Mohawk Valley in New York.  The next three townships to the west were given to those from Jessup’s Corps.  The first Cataraqui (now Kingston) was peopled by Loyalists from New York, many of them Dutch and German, who had served under Captain Michael Grass.  The third and fourth were given to those parts of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York who had been stationed at Oswego at the end of the war.  Cataraqui fifth township became home to disbanded regular troops including some German mercenaries.  

The first group of refugees settled include 1,568 men, 626 women, 1,492 children and 90 servants - a total of 3,776 people.  Others came later, responding to proclamations from the Colonial authorities inviting them to find transport at Ile-aux-Noix, Sacketts Harbor, Oswego or Niagara.

While some lots were set aside for the officers, most were determined by drawing from a hat.  These refugees had lost everything in fleeing the United States and their new lands were not going to produce food in the first years.  They continued to be dependent on the British government to supply them with the necessities of life.  Haldimand obliged, pushing back on orders from England to cut expenses.  

The refugees found themselves in virgin forest.  They had to clear the land and, from that wood, build their homes with their own effort.  The British government supplied them with some tools including

 Homes, when they were built, were mostly log cabins, with furniture made by hand from the local trees and windows of oiled paper rather than glass.  Cooking occurred in the fireplace as stoves did not become common in Upper Canada until the 19th century.  In 1787, crops failed and hunger was widespread in 1788.  

Within five years 3,200,000 acres had been granted in the newly mapped townships.  In 1791, the Constitution Act created the Province of Upper Canada out of these new lands, separating it from Quebec which would henceforth be known as Lower Canada (consistent with the Upper and Lower reaches of the St. Lawrence River.). The land was now producing enough to feed the population.  Metallic currency had finally arrived and an economy was growing.  The population grew to more than 10,000.


Impact of the Refugees on Canada

The settlement of refugees from the Revolution in their home colonies south of the border fundamentally changed the nature of what was to become Canada.  It went from a primarily French colony to one with different societies, French, English and Indigenous, living side by side.  It expanded the more densely populated areas far to the west and created reliable communications reaching through to Detroit.  

The settlement changed the nature of the colony from a British outpost run exclusively by an appointed Governor General to a land with democratic institutions.  The need to provide the refugees with a say in government resulted in the replacement of the  Quebec Act of 1774 with the Constitutional Act of 1791 providing legislative assemblies to both Upper and Lower Canada.

Beyond the founding of New France, it was arguably the most significant development in the creation of the country and the entire reason for the establishment of what is now the province of Ontario.

“Lord Dorchester (as Sir Guy Carleton was by that time styled) proposed in 1789 ‘to put a Marke of Honor upon the families who had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.’  It was therefore resolved that all Loyalists of that description were ‘to be distinguished by the letters U.E. affixed to their names, alluding to their great principle, the unity of the empire.’”  “A list was compiled form various sources which was know as the ‘Old U.E. List’.’ Only those whose ancestors are in that list, have the right to describe themselves as a United Empire Loyalist.

Primary Source

The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of Migration - W. Stewart Wallace, 1914