Bell - Loyalist rebellion in New Brunswick: a defining conflict for Canadas political culture

Loyal Americans trapped in the region of British-occupied New York City at the end of the American Revolution fell into two broad groups. The Refugees were civilian Loyalists. Soldiers serving in one of the several dozen military units raised in America to support the British war effort were called Provincials. Most Refugee households evacuated from New York to St. John River came as members of a militia company which, confusingly, had no military function. Evacuees to what would become the Maritime provinces were neither entitled to call themselves, nor did they call themselves, United Empire Loyalists, a distinction awarded to those who settled in the old province of Quebec.

When Loyalist transport ships arrived at St. John harbour in 1783 the area was part of Nova Scotias Sunbury County. It was not until June 18, 1784, that Britain included the St. John River valley in a province called New Brunswick. Separation from Nova Scotia became complete in November with the public reading of the commission of newly arrived Governor Thomas Carleton. By its constitutional documents New Brunswick was a British province, though more commonly it was called a colony. In 1867 New Brunswick became part of the federation called Canada.

Before 1783 the area at the mouth of the St. John River was called St. John (or St. Johns) harbour. By years end the two new Loyalist settlements on the harbours east and west sides were designated Parr-town and Carleton respectively. In 1785 both were incorporated into a city called Saint John, although the older names remained in use. As a matter of convenience, this book makes free use of the term Saint John in the period prior to formal adoption of the name.

Quotations from eighteenth-century sources preserve their original spelling and capitalization. Superscripts have been lowered and punctuation has sometimes been standardized.

His crime against America was breaking the tea boycott.

Young Sylvanus Whitney was a small-time trader at Stamford, in the corner of Connecticut nearest New York City. In the spring of 1775 he began quiet dealing in the East India Companys fine Bohea tea. He took this risk even as most of his neighbours fell in with Americas boycott of British tea to protest taxation of the colonies. Betrayed to Stamfords ominous Committee of Observation, Whitney was made to beg the favour of the publick to overlook this my transgression. To drive the lesson home, local Patriots summoned fifes and drums and marched the tea in grand procession to a gallows. Here they ceremoniously hanged, then burnt it.

With the usual three huzzas the mob dispersed, leaving the teas owner to ponder the message of the ashes. He had been spared tar and feathers. In return, he had pledged to behave as a true friend to my Country. But what country? At the close of the American crisis Sylvanus Whitney would lead a company of fellow Connecticut Loyalists on their voyage of exile to Nova Scotias St. John River.

In the not very distant days of Whitneys childhood, America had been ardent in its attachment to king and empire, even if British policies caused occasional head-shaking. For the chronically disunited American colonies, Britains army and navy were the only effective security against New France and its Amerindian allies. Whitney was a boy of nine in 1758 when the glorious news arrived that General Amherst had taken Louisbourg in Cape Breton, freeing New England from the French threat to the cod fishery. He was ten when word came through of Wolfes cunning conquest of the mighty fortress of Quebec. With it, the French-Amerindian encirclement of Britains continental colonies was finally smashed. How the bells rang out along the Atlantic seaboard. From the St. Lawrence valley down to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Mississippi eastward to the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to the Floridas: now all was British .