The American refugees who fled north to Canada after Britain's defeat by the revolutionary U.S. army were determined to build a culture separate from the U.S. By their numbers and their politics they became effectively the founders of English Canada. In 1784 Britain carved out the new province, New Brunswick, for these Loyalist refugees, creating a special homeland where they could run their own show. But, given a chance to found a new society, the Loyalist refugees turned against each other in a savage contest for political power. In Saint John, where 10,000 people arrived in a space of months, an elite of well-connected, powerful men mainly from Massachusetts allied themselves with officials appointed by Britain and sought to control the levers of power in the colony. They were opposed by upstart political leaders who, with the support of a majority of residents, bitterly fought the already-entrenched minority. The result was conflict, a war of words that soon escalated into mob violence and criminal trials. British soldiers were called out in defiance of normal constitutional practice to restore order. When the critics of the governor won an election, the governor and his coterie engineered a reversal of the result. Popular political leaders were charged and convicted of sedition. Then the governor and his supporters passed legislation making even written petitions illegal. The new colony's conservative elite used every available device to maintain their grip on power. In the end, the governor boasted to London that the new colony was now passive and obedient. The hostility of colonial administrators in Canada to dissent and political opposition and their labelling their opponents -- even Loyalists -- as disloyal rebels was long lasting. From his extensive research in early records and his understanding of this crucial period, David G. Bell has written a fascinating account of early Canadian politics that challenges many conventional ideas about the role of Loyalists and British colonial administrators in Canada's original political culture.

The Loyalists were colonial Americans who supported the British empire and opposed independence during the long revolutionary war. When the American Revolution ended in a peace treaty that was too feeble to protect them against persecution in the newly independent United States, tens of thousands fl ed to a new life in exile. In 1783 many of them sailed northward from the New York City area to the St. John River valley in the future Canadian province of New Brunswick. This volume makes available for the fi rst time the source materials documenting this vast migration. Most records were discovered at the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In this book you can follow thousands of loyal American refugees at one or more critical points in their journey of exile: on registering their names at New York to take part in the exoduson boarding a ship for the voyage northwardon drawing provisions from the army commissariat at St. John Harbour after arrivalas recipients of town lots in the future city of Saint Johnas participants in the political turmoil that overtook the American Loyalists in exile This rich resource will be treasured by both family historians and those interested in New Brunswicks colourful past.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

Few Canadians realize how close the colony of Nova Scotia came to joining the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Many Nova Scotians were immigrants from New England, including the Planters who, some twenty years earlier, had taken over the farms of the expelled Acadians. Between family ties and unrestrained privateering, there was much sympathy in Nova Scotia for the American Patriots. In Hope Restored, Robert Dallison tells the story of how the British raised two regiments and sent their members to the area that, as a result, became New Brunswick, thus overcoming the groundswell and fending off Patriot attacks. These soldiers had two jobs: to fight the Americans, and to settle the land as a bulwark against invasion. Spem reduxit (hope restored) became their motto and the motto of the province they founded. As well as telling the story of the Loyalist regiments, Hope Restored describes many Loyalist and Revolutionary War sites, some of which can be visited today. Among them are the Loyalist Encampment and Cemetery in Fredericton, Saint John's Fort Howe, and the MacDonald Farm Provincial Historic Park in Northumberland County. Hope Restored is the second book in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series published by Goose Lane Editions in collaboration with the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project. Written by historians and military personnel, the books in this series will explore subjects ranging from New Brunswick's pivotal role in the American Revolution to one veteran's account of caring for World War I cavalry horses. All of the volumes will be fully illustrated with modern and archival maps, photos, and works of art and are available at all bookstores in New Brunswick.

The American refugees who fled north to Canada after Britain's defeat by the revolutionary U.S. army were determined to build a culture separate from the U.S. By their numbers and their politics they became effectively the founders of English Canada. In 1784 Britain carved out the new province, New Brunswick, for these Loyalist refugees, creating a special homeland where they could run their own show. But, given a chance to found a new society, the Loyalist refugees turned against each other in a savage contest for political power. In Saint John, where 10,000 people arrived in a space of months, an elite of well-connected, powerful men mainly from Massachusetts allied themselves with officials appointed by Britain and sought to control the levers of power in the colony. They were opposed by upstart political leaders who, with the support of a majority of residents, bitterly fought the already-entrenched minority. The result was conflict, a war of words that soon escalated into mob violence and criminal trials. British soldiers were called out in defiance of normal constitutional practice to restore order. When the critics of the governor won an election, the governor and his coterie engineered a reversal of the result. Popular political leaders were charged and convicted of sedition. Then the governor and his supporters passed legislation making even written petitions illegal. The new colony's conservative elite used every available device to maintain their grip on power. In the end, the governor boasted to London that the new colony was now passive and obedient. The hostility of colonial administrators in Canada to dissent and political opposition and their labelling their opponents -- even Loyalists -- as disloyal rebels was long lasting. From his extensive research in early records and his understanding of this crucial period, David G. Bell has written a fascinating account of early Canadian politics that challenges many conventional ideas about the role of Loyalists and British colonial administrators in Canada's original political culture.

In 1783 and 1784, some fifty thousand Americans felt that they could not support the revolution against Britain. They were called Loyalists – and there would be no place for them in the new United States. As they streamed into the Canadian colonies to the north, they changed forever the face of settlement there. Their arrival would eventually lead to the formation of the provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario. First published in hardcover in 1984, the bicentenary of the migration, The Loyalists tells the very human story of these people – of the societies that shaped them, the attitudes that motivated them, and the circumstances that determined their future and influenced the future of Canada. It went on to win the Secretary of State's Prize for Excellence in Canadian Studies.

This book examines Freemasonry in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Drawing on fresh empirical evidence, the chapters position fraternalism as a critical component of Atlantic history. Fraternalism was a key strategy for people swept up in the dislocations of imperialism, large-scale migrations, and the socio-political upheavals of revolution. Ranging from confraternities to Masonic lodges to friendly societies, fraternal organizations offered people opportunities to forge linkages across diverse and widely separated parts of the world. Using six case studies, the contributors to this volume address multiple themes of fraternal organizations: their role in revolutionary movements; their intersections with the conflictive histories of racism, slavery, and anti-slavery; their appeal for diasporic groups throughout the Atlantic world, such as revolutionary refugees, European immigrants in North America, and members of the Jewish diaspora; and the limits of fraternal "brothering" in addressing the challenges of modernity. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents.