Imperial shuffle

American Loyalists in Canada

Historians of the American Revolution, including me, typically write the American losers, the Loyalists, out of the story as they sail away from New York on British ships at the end of the war. Okay, I gave them a couple of paragraphs of epilogue, but that was it.

Historians of Canada, by contrast, write the American Loyalists into the story at just that point. In an illustration of the principle that framing is crucial to any story, or that one person's loss is another's gain, the resettlement of tens of thousands of Loyalists in Canada opened a new and formative chapter in the history of that country.

The Loyalists solved two problems the British government of Canada had been dealing with for some time. The first problem was inherited from the French when Britain took Canada from France at the end of the Seven Years War. A main reason France lost Canada was that the French had never been able to populate Canada with their settlers. French colonial policy was too dirigiste to entice French men and women to leave their homes for that cold country across the Atlantic. At last count, the population of New France was about 70,000. For comparison, the population of the thirteen British colonies was more than 2 million. The transfer of between 50,000 and 100,000 American Loyalists to Canada doubled the population overnight.

The second British problem in Canada was the residual French influence there. Nearly all the nonindigenous residents of New France were French; the new British government had been compelled to acquiesce in continuing French practices in law and politics. They hoped that as Canada attracted British settlers, this would change. The arrival of all the American Loyalists, steeped in British custom and demonstrably loyal to it, accelerated the change dramatically. From being a colony of French people governed awkwardly by British officials, Canada became a colony of French and British people governed more smoothly by British officials. And the enhanced Britishness created by the presence of the Loyalists attracted immigrants from Britain.

The French Canadians weren't thrilled at being swamped in what had been their country until recently. Nor were the indigenous tribes pleased by the influx of white settlers. The Indians also had to deal with Indian immigration—by tribes and parts of tribes that had bet on a British victory in the American war, and lost. Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief, had been a scourge of the rebels in the American war; in the aftermath he decided to accept British protection in Canada for himself and his part of the tribe.

Another group of Loyalists needed protection even more than the Mohawks. Early in the war the British government had offered freedom to slaves of rebel masters who crossed the fighting lines and joined the British army. More than a thousand slaves accepted the offer and took up arms against their masters. When the fighting ended at Yorktown in 1781, conspicuous Loyalists sought refuge in New York city, the last part of American territory under British control. No Loyalists were more conspicuous than the Black Loyalists, as they were called. With trepidation they awaited the terms of the final peace settlement. Their great fear was that British diplomats in Paris would agree to restoration of property commandeered during the war. This was a longstanding military practice, which made perfect sense when applied to houses and other forms of immovable property. But would it apply to property in humans, namely slaves?

The Black Loyalists were appalled to learn that the Paris treaty did call for restoration of property. They shuddered to think of the retribution that awaited them when they were returned to their masters, whom they had not merely fled but tried to kill.

To their enormous relief, the British commander in New York decided to ignore that clause of the treaty. The Black Loyalists were taken aboard the ships along with the other Loyalists and were spirited off to Canada, beyond the reach of American law.

In Canada they encountered the established French population, the dramatically enlarged British population and the slightly enlarged indigenous population. They also encountered a new population of slaves, the chattel of Loyalist masters. The British offer of emancipation hadn't applied to them, and the American government hadn't seen fit to make an offer of emancipation to slaves of Loyalist masters.

The new black community in Canada experienced some of the same mistreatment black people encountered in other parts of the British empire. Friction escalated to riot in the town of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1784, when white Loyalists fought with black Loyalists. The troubles diminished after the British government founded the colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa for former slaves. Many of the black Loyalists in Canada, put off by the cold winters as well as the racial hostility, decided to give Africa a try. Others wound up in the British West Indies.

Some of the Loyalist refugees in Canada found their way back to the United States. Joseph Brant became a celebrated figure on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. But most stayed north, even attracting other immigrants from the States. Amid the War of 1812, when American leaders boasted that Canada could be conquered with little effort, the former Loyalists and their heirs fought as fiercely against the troops of the U.S. government as they and their fathers had fought against U.S. troops during the Revolutionary War. The American invasion of Canada collapsed ignominiously.