United Empire Loyalist (UEL, or simply Loyalist) is an honorific title which was first given by the 1st Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec and governor general of the Canadas, to American Loyalists who resettled in British North America during or after the American Revolution. At that time, the demonym Canadian or Canadien was used by the descendants of New France settlers inhabiting the Province of Quebec.
They settled primarily in Nova Scotia and the province of Quebec. The influx of loyalist settlers resulted in the creation of several new colonies. In 1784, New Brunswick was partitioned from the Colony of Nova Scotia after significant loyalist resettlement around the Bay of Fundy. The influx of loyalist refugees also resulted in the province of Quebec's division into Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) in 1791. The Crown gave them land grants of one lot. One lot consisted of per person to encourage their resettlement, as the Government wanted to develop the frontier of Upper Canada. This resettlement added many English speakers to the Canadian population. It was the beginning of new waves of immigration that established a predominantly Anglo-Canadian population in the future Canada both west and east of the modern Quebec border.
History American Revolution
Following the end of the American Revolutionary War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, both Loyalist soldiers and civilians were evacuated from New York City, most heading for Canada. Many Loyalists had already migrated to Canada, especially from New York and northern New England, where violence against them had increased during the war.
The Crown-allotted land in Canada was sometimes allotted according to which Loyalist regiment a man had fought in. This Loyalist resettlement was critical to the development of present-day Ontario, and some 10,000 refugees went to Quebec (including the Eastern Townships and modern-day Ontario). But Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick) received three times that number: about 35,000–40,000 Loyalist refugees.Censuses of Canada 1665 to 1871: Upper Canada & Loyalists (1785 to 1797). Statcan.gc.ca (22 October 2008). Retrieved on 2013-07-24,
Many of these loyalist immigrants did not stay in Canada; they eventually returned to the United States. Some families were split in their loyalties during the war years. Many Loyalists in Canada maintained ties with relatives in the United States. They conducted commerce across the border with little regard to British trade laws.Rees, Ronald. Land of the Loyalists: Their Struggle to Shape the Maritimes, Nimbus, 146 p., 2000, . In the 1790s, Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's offer of land and low taxes, which were one-quarter the level of those in the U.S., in exchange for allegiance resulted in the arrival of 30,000 Americans, often referred to as Late Loyalists. By the outbreak of the War of 1812, the 110,000 inhabitants of Upper Canada, consisted of 20,000 initial Loyalists, 60,000 later U.S. immigrants and their descendants, and the rest being immigrants from the UK (including Ireland) and their descendants and immigrants from the Old Province of Quebec. Likely the main reason for the movement of Quebec residents to Upper Canada was land.
Resettlement
The arrival of the Loyalists after the Revolutionary War led to the division of Canada into the provinces of Upper Canada (what is now southern Ontario) and Lower Canada (today's southern Quebec). They arrived and were largely settled in groups by ethnicity and religion. Many soldiers settled with others of the regiments they had served with."A Short History of the United Empire Loyalists", by Ann Mackenzie, M.A., United Empire Loyalists Association of Canada, accessed 8 February 2010 The settlers came from every social class and all thirteen colonies, unlike the depiction of them in the Sandham painting which suggests the arrivals were well-dressed upper-class immigrants.
Loyalists soon petitioned the government to be allowed to use the British legal system, which they were accustomed to in the American colonies, rather than the French system. Great Britain had maintained the French legal system and allowed freedom of religion after taking over the former French colony with the defeat of France in the Seven Years' War. With the creation of Upper and Lower Canada, most Loyalists in the west could live under British laws and institutions. The predominantly ethnic French population of Lower Canada, who were still French-speaking, could maintain their familiar French civil law and Catholic religion.
Realizing the importance of some type of recognition, on 9 November 1789, Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec and Governor General of British North America, declared "that it was his Wish to put the mark of Honour upon the Families who had adhered to the Unity of the Empire". As a result of Dorchester's statement, the printed militia rolls carried the notation:
Those Loyalists who have adhered to the Unity of the Empire, and joined the Royal Standard before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783, and all their Children and their Descendants by either sex, are to be distinguished by the following Capitals, affixed to their names: UE or U.E. Alluding to their great principle The Unity of the Empire.
Because most of the nations of the Iroquois had allied with the British, which had ceded their lands to the United States, thousands of Iroquois and other pro-British Native Americans were expelled from New York and other states. They were also resettled in Canada. Many of the Iroquois, led by Joseph Brant Thayendenegea, settled at Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada. A smaller group of Iroquois led by Captain John Deserontyon Odeserundiye, settled on the shores of the Bay of Quinte in modern-day southeastern Ontario.
The government settled some 3,500 Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but they faced discrimination and the same inadequate support that all Loyalists experienced.Patrick Bode, "Upper Canada, 1793: Simcoe and the Slaves." Beaver 1993 73(3): 17–19 Delays in making land grants, but mostly the fact that blacks were paid less than whites, and so held jobs whites might have worked, aggravated racist tensions in Shelburne. Mobs of white Loyalists attacked Black Loyalists in the Shelburne Riots in July 1784, Canada's first so-called "race" riot.James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists, University of Toronto Press (1992) p. 49 The government was slow to survey the land of Black Loyalists (which meant they could not settle); it was also discriminatory in granting them smaller, poorer, and more remote lands than those of white settlers; not counting those Loyalists who were resettled in what would become Upper Canada, in general, or around the Bay of Quinte, in specific. This increased their difficulties in becoming established."Black Loyalists in New Brunswick, 1783–1853", Atlantic Canada Portal, University of New Brunswick, accessed 8 February 2010 The majority of Black Loyalists in Canada were refugees from the American South; they suffered from this discrimination and the harsh winters.
When Great Britain set up the colony of Sierra Leone in Africa, nearly 1,300 Black Loyalists emigrated there in 1792 for the promise of self-government. And so 2,200 remained. The Black Loyalists that left established Freetown in Sierra Leone. Well into the 20th century, together with other early settlers from Jamaica and slaves liberated from illegal slave ships, and despite vicious attacks from the indigenous peoples that nearly ended the Maroon colony, they and their descendants dominated the culture, economy and government of Sierra Leone.Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers of Nova Scotia's First Free Black Communities, Halifax: Nimbus Publishing (2013) p. 166
Numerous Loyalists had been forced to abandon substantial amounts of property in the United States. Britain sought restoration or compensation for this lost property from the United States, which was a major issue during the negotiation of the Jay Treaty in 1795. Negotiations settled on the concept of the United States negotiators "advising" the U.S. Congress to provide restitution. For the British, this concept carried significant legal weight, far more than it did to the Americans; the U.S. Congress declined to accept the advice.
Slavery
Slave-owning Loyalists from across the former Thirteen Colonies brought their slaves with them to Canada, as the practice was still legal there. They took a total of about 2,000 slaves to British North America: 500 in Upper Canada (Ontario), 300 in Lower Canada (Quebec), and 1,200 in the Maritime colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The presence and condition of slaves in the Maritimes would become a particular issue. They constituted a larger portion of the population, but it was not an area of plantation agriculture.
The settlers eventually freed many of these slaves. Together with the free Black Loyalists, many chose to go to Sierra Leone in 1792 and following years, seeking a chance for self-government. Meanwhile, the British Parliament passed the Settlers in American Colonies Act 1790 (30 Geo. 3. c. 27) that assured prospective immigrants to Canada that they could retain their slaves as property. In 1793, an anti-slavery law was passed, in the 1st Parliament of Upper Canada. The Act Against Slavery banned the importation of slaves into the colony, and mandated the emancipation of all children born henceforth to female slaves upon reaching the age of 25. The Act was partially introduced due to the influx of the number of slaves brought by Loyalist refugees to Upper Canada. The slave trade was abolished across the British Empire in 1807. The institution of slavery was abolished Empire-wide by 1834 (except in India, where it was considered an indigenous institution).
War of 1812
From 1812 to 1815, the United States and the United Kingdom were engaged in a conflict known as the War of 1812. On 18 June 1812, US President James Madison signed the declaration of war into law, after receiving heavy pressure from the War Hawks in Congress.
By 1812, Upper Canada had been settled mostly by Revolution-era Loyalists from the United States (United Empire Loyalists) and postwar American and British immigrants. The Canadas were thinly populated and only lightly defended by the British Army and the sedentary units of the Canadian Militia. American leaders assumed that Canada could be easily overrun, with former president Thomas Jefferson optimistically describing the potential conquest of Canada as "a matter of marching". Many Loyalist Americans had migrated to Upper Canada after the Revolutionary War. However, there was also a significant number of non-Loyalist American settlers in the area due to the offer of land grants to immigrants. The Americans assumed the latter population would favour the American cause, but they did not. Although the population of Upper Canada included recent settlers from the United States who had no obvious loyalties to the Crown, the American forces found strong opposition from settlers during the War of 1812.