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Frontierism, Capital, and the American Loyalists in Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Howard Temperley
Howard Temperley
Affiliation:
Howard Temperley is Editor of the Journal of American Studies and Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of East AngliaNorwich. He wishes to thank Wallace Brown, Ann Condon, Greg Palmer, and Peter A. Russell for their assistance in the preparation of this paper, an earlier version of which was delivered to the annual conference of the British Association for Canadian Studies in April 1978.
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Extract

Everyone agrees that the American Loyalists had a hard time of it. Not only were they on the losing side in a long and cruel war — in their case rendered particularly bitter by virtue of being a civil war — but when hostilities ended they found themselves deprived of possessions, forced into exile, severed from relations and friends, and obliged to adapt to unfamiliar customs and surroundings. For those who took refuge in what remained of British North America, as approximately half of them did — some 40,000 in all — starting over again involved special difficulties. Winters there were long and cold, and the territories in which they found themselves were mostly still in a state of nature, uncultivated, unmapped, and in some cases virtually unexplored. Indeed, how suitable these lands were for settlement was at first by no means clear. “ Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada,” observed William Cobbett, who visited the Maritimes shortly after the arrival of the first exiles, “ are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.” This was not entirely true, but it was a notion which must have crossed the minds of many of the refugees themselves as, wintering in their camps, they contemplated the wilderness around them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1979 , pp. 5 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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40 Campbell, p. 282.

41 PMG 11 series, 53 and 54.

42 Besides half-pay, many leading Loyalists drew military allowances – for example as “ Fort Majors.” The 1790 files list 59 Fort Majors and the 1813 files 38. Among those who served in this capacity throughout the period were David Fanning, Christopher Billop and Abiather Camp. The size of the allowances bore little relation to rank, evidently varying according to the nature of the duties required. WO 24 Series, 748–62.

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