Nova Scotia

SHELBURNE AND THE LOYALISTS

There are, apart from the capital, five famous historical shrines in New Scotland—Annapolis Royal, Louisbourg, Grand Pré, Fort Lawrence, and Shelburne. How many English readers know anything of Shelburne? How many have ever so much as heard the name? And yet, once, a century and a quarter ago, the uprising of this town, in a single night as it were, the sufferings of the 12,000 American Loyalist refugees who had landed there to found it, evoked a widespread interest. The tale of the Loyalists of Shelburne rang through the hall at Westminster, and in the Colonial Assemblies. It was told in the closet of the King, and was set forth in the newspapers; and what a story it was! English history scarce can show its parallel. It is the tale of the exiled Huguenots, but the impelling motive was not loyalty to a form of faith, but to an earthly sovereign and a flag. How much fanaticism, how much bigotry, is interwoven with religious sacrifice! We may respect, but we cannot love the cold and narrow minds who, whether called Protestant, or Catholic, or Puritan, fled from their country because of the doctrine they disliked or an article they distrusted, who were ready to put seas of salt water between them and a rubric, or to risk seas of human blood to escape the sight of a chasuble or the necessity for a genuflexion.

But personal loyalty one understands—the love for one’s flag and one’s own people strikes a responsive chord in warm bosoms. The Puritans, I fear, who founded New England, were but indifferent patriots. The cry of “St. George and Merry England!” would amongst them have proved a feeble tocsin.

The Loyalists were, as I have said, the best class in America, comprising the most notable judges, the most eminent lawyers, most cultured clergy, most distinguished physicians, most educated and refined of the people north and south. Long before the war broke out, the Boston mobs had persecuted them for their political professions. Any official or merchant sympathising with the British Army or British Government of the day was a target for their insolence. They set Governor Hutchinson’s mansion in flames; sheriffs and judges were mobbed, feeble old men were driven into the woods, and innocent women insulted. With the progress of the war, the violence of the revolutionists increased in intensity. Thousands sought safety with the King’s troops; many others armed themselves and fought valiantly for the King and the British connection. To be suspected of being a Loyalist was to have one’s estate confiscated, and even to be punished with death.

But what the Loyalists suffered during the war, when the issue of the contest was doubtful, was nothing to what they had to endure after 1783.

The British Empire had been badly served by the officers England had sent out to America. If Wolfe had lived to direct her armies, the end might have been different; but mismanagement reigned, and such Generals as Gage, Burgoyne, and Cornwallis, planned feebly and fought half-heartedly. If there was any doubt as to the result, that doubt was speedily set at rest when England’s hereditary enemy, France, espoused the cause of the American insurgents. French money, ships, and men poured into America. The Americans fought with French muskets, they were clad in French clothing, and they were paid with gold which the impoverished people of France could ill spare. Great is the debt America owes to the French King and statesmen of that time.[13]

With the conclusion of the war, the men who had stood staunch and faithful to the United Empire were destined to undergo a further ordeal. As “traitors” they were pursued through the streets; their families were driven into the woods; they were shot down remorselessly. Rows of them were hung up like felons. At the battle of King’s Mountain, in North Carolina, ten of the prisoners, men of character and influence, were hanged in cold blood. There were many instances of ferocious executions upon prisoners.

Under the Treaty of 1783 they had been abandoned by the Mother Country to the tender mercies of the American conquerors.

“When I consider the case of the Loyalists,” said Wilberforce in Parliament, “I confess I there feel myself conquered; I there see my country humiliated; I there see her at the feet of America!” “A peace founded on the sacrifice of these unhappy subjects,” declared another, “must be accursed in the sight of God and man.”[14]

Nova Scotia proper, during the war, had not been molested, and to it the Loyalists now turned in large numbers as a refuge under the flag. Acadia was to be the Canaan of the Loyalists.

Somewhere—for most of them knew it but vaguely—in that northern land, in the virgin forests of pine, and maple, and hemlock, in the solitudes of seashore, lake, and river, which no man of English blood had yet seen, was the refuge the Loyalists sought.

In November 1783, New York was evacuated by the King’s troops under Sir Guy Carlton. He carried with him all the stores belonging to the Crown, all baggage and artillery, and he was accompanied by 40,000 men, women, and children. New York was the stronghold of the Loyalists; Pennsylvania had been equally divided between Loyalists and Revolutionists; there were more Loyalists in Virginia than adherents of Congress; and Georgia had at least three Loyalists for every rebel. Thousands had perished; thousands had sought refuge in England; thousands had recanted. Fifty thousand now set out with their wives and children and such belongings as were left to them to traverse the hundreds of miles which lay between them and their new homesteads in Canada. These United Empire Loyalists were the fathers of English Canada.

There are few tales which history has to tell so stirring and so noble as the exodus of the Loyalists. Most of them had been brought up in comfort and even luxury; their women were tenderly nurtured and unaccustomed to hardship. But one spirit animated them all; one hope fired all their bosoms; one faith drove them out of the American Republic into the wilderness.

The exiles were divided into two main streams, one moving eastward to Nova Scotia and the country where, a century and a half before, Poutrincourt and La Tour had fought and flourished. The other moved westward to the region north of Lake Ontario. Those who followed the eastern course landed at the mouth of the St. John River, New Brunswick, on the 18th May 1783, a day still celebrated in the city of St. John’s. They took up settlements in the meadows of the Bay of Fundy, and at Port Rasoir in Nova Scotia. There, like the city in the Arabian tale, there sprang up, as if by magic, the town of Shelburne, with 12,000 inhabitants, where yesterday had been but solitude.

“No one will know because none has told all that these brave pioneers underwent for their devotion and fidelity. You will see to-day on the outskirts of the older settlements little mounds, moss-covered tombstones which record the last resting places of the forefathers of the hamlet. They do not tell you of the brave hearts laid low by hunger and exposure, of the girlish forms wasted away, of the babes and little children who perished for want of proper food and raiment. They have nothing to tell of the courageous high-minded mothers, wives, and daughters, who bore themselves as bravely as men, complaining never, toiling with the men in the fields, banishing all regrets for the life they might have led had they sacrificed their loyalty.... No great monument is raised to their memory; none is needed; it is enshrined for ever in the hearts of every Canadian and of every one who admires fidelity to principle, devotion, and self-sacrifice.”[15]

In the spring of 1783 a fleet of eighteen large ships and several small vessels, convoyed by two warships, brought 471 Loyalist families from New York to a fine harbour called Port Roseway (Rasoir), where the redoubtable Colonel M’Nutt had a few years before intended to build the city of New Jerusalem. There, too,

but the shiploads of Americans, whose cause of King and United Empire had been lost, hoped they were destined to a propitious spot where they could begin their fortunes anew. When these Loyalists, who called themselves “True Blues,” landed, what a picture was then presented!

“As soon as we had set up a kind of tent we knelt down, my wife and I and our two boys, and kissed the dear ground and thanked God that the flag of England floated there, and resolved that we would work with the rest to become again happy and prosperous.”

And the spirit which animated the bosom of worthy Jonathan Beecher and his flock dwelt with nearly all of those five thousand foregathered on the sloping shore of this beautiful harbour. Lanterns and torches flamed that night; laughter and tears intermingled. Hundreds of forms moved about restlessly. There was singing of hymns, trolling of glees, and toasting of His Majesty and Governor Parr. Trunks, and packing-cases, and valises were opened. A table was brought from the ship, and round it sat a number of ladies in silk dresses and powdered hair. A few desired a dance as an outlet for their tumultuous thoughts; and so there in the moonlight the young, the hopeful, the light-hearted, that all their recent sufferings could not wholly dismay, danced a quadrille—danced it out of sheer high spirits, and only separated at dawn.

And the woods behind a group of swarthy Micmacs and their squaws came to overpeer and wonder at the spectacle—thinking a host of mad folk had been blown across the Big Drink. Mad indeed they were—mad for joy—mad in their hopes and schemes—mad in their utter improvidence.

Other immigrants followed, and within a short time 16,000 inhabitants were here. A fort was built, troops were stationed, and warships continually paraded the harbour; and much work was done, particularly wharf and road building. In 1788 the exports comprised 13,151 quintals dry cod, 4193 casks of pickled fish, 61 casks of smoked salmon, 149 barrels fish oil, and 14,793 gallons sperm oil, During the year Prince William Henry (afterwards William IV.) visited the town, a ball being given in his honour. Yet even then Shelburne was existing on an artificial basis. For the first three years 9000 of the “True Blues” (or Blue Noses) drew rations from the British Government, and demoralisation set in. Then came a great storm in 1798 which wiped out wharves and shipping; other calamities followed, and by 1818 the population had dwindled to 300 souls.