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a colonist of the American revolutionary period who supported the British cause.

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Britannia offers solace and a promise of compensation for her exiled American-born British Loyalists. (Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783, engraving by Henry Moses after a painting by Benjamin West.)

Flag of the United Empire Loyalists.

Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriots, who supported the revolution, and called them "persons inimical to the liberties of America."

Prominent Loyalists repeatedly assured the British government that many thousands of them would spring to arms and fight for the Crown. The British government acted in expectation of that, especially during the Southern campaigns of 1780 and 1781. Britain was able to effectively protect the people only in areas where they had military control, and in return, the number of military Loyalists was significantly lower than what had been expected. Due to conflicting political views, loyalists were often under suspicion of those in the British military, who did not know whom they could fully trust in such a conflicted situation; they were often looked down upon.

Patriots watched suspected Loyalists very closely and would not tolerate any organized Loyalist opposition. Many outspoken or militarily active Loyalists were forced to flee, especially to their stronghold of New York City. William Franklin, the royal governor of New Jersey and son of Patriot leader Benjamin Franklin, became the leader of the Loyalists after his release from a Patriot prison in 1778. He worked to build Loyalist military units to fight in the war. Woodrow Wilson wrote that

"there had been no less than twenty-five thousand loyalists enlisted in the British service during the five years of the fighting. At one time (1779) they had actually outnumbered the whole of the continental muster under the personal command of Washington."

When their cause was defeated, about 15 percent of the Loyalists (65,000-70,000 people) fled to other parts of the British Empire; especially to Britain itself, or to British North America (now Canada). The southern Loyalists moved mostly to Florida, which had remained loyal to the Crown, and to British Caribbean possessions. Northern Loyalists largely migrated to Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. They called themselves United Empire Loyalists. Most were compensated with Canadian land or British cash distributed through formal claims procedures. Loyalists who left the US received over £3 million or about 37% of their losses from the British government. Loyalists who stayed in the US were generally able to retain their property and become American citizens. Many Loyalists eventually returned to the US after the war and discriminatory laws had been repealed. Historians have estimated that between 15% and 20% (300,000 to 400,000) of the 2,000,000 whites in the colonies in 1775 were Loyalists.

Families were often divided during the American Revolution, and many felt themselves to be both American and British, still owing loyalty to the mother country. Maryland lawyer Daniel Dulaney the Younger opposed taxation without representation but would not break his oath to the King or take up arms against him. He wrote: "There may be a time when redress may not be obtained. Till then, I shall recommend a legal, orderly, and prudent resentment". Most Americans hoped for a peaceful reconciliation but were forced to choose sides by the Patriots who took control nearly everywhere in the Thirteen Colonies in 1775-76.

Yale historian Leonard Woods Larabee has identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative and loyal to the King and to Britain:

They were older, better established, and resisted radical change.

They felt that rebellion against the Crown-the legitimate government-was morally wrong. They saw themselves as Americans but loyal to the British Empire and saw a rebellion against Great Britain as a betrayal to the Empire. At the time the national identity of Americans was still in formation and the very idea of two separate peoples (nationalities) with their own sovereign states (the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America) was itself revolutionary.

They felt alienated when the Patriots (seen by them as separatists who rebelled against the Crown) resorted to violence, such as burning down houses and tarring and feathering.

They wanted to take a middle-of-the-road position and were not pleased when forced by Patriots to declare their opposition.

They had business and family links with Britain.

They felt that independence from Britain would come eventually, but wanted it to come about organically.

They were wary that chaos, corruption, and mob rule would come about as a result of revolution.

Some were "pessimists" who did not display the same belief in the future that the Patriots did. Others recalled the dreadful experiences of many Jacobite rebels after the failure of the last Jacobite rebellion as recently as 1745 who often lost their lands when the Hanoverian government won.

Other motives of the Loyalists included:

They felt a need for order and believed that Parliament was the legitimate authority.

In New York, powerful families had assembled colony-wide coalitions of supporters; men long associated with the French Huguenot/Dutch De Lancey faction went along when its leadership decided to support the crown.

They felt themselves to be weak or threatened within American society and in need of an outside defender such as the British Crown and Parliament.

They felt that being a part of the British Empire was crucial in terms of commerce and their business operations.

In the opening months of the Revolutionary War, the Patriots laid siege to Boston, where most of the British forces were stationed. Elsewhere there were few British troops and the Patriots seized control of all levels of government, as well as supplies of arms and gunpowder. Vocal Loyalists recruited people to their side, often with the encouragement and assistance of royal governors. In the South Carolina back country, Loyalist recruitment outstripped that of Patriots. A brief siege at Ninety Six, South Carolina in the fall of 1775 was followed by a rapid rise in Patriot recruiting. In what became known as the Snow Campaign, partisan militia arrested or drove out most of the back country Loyalist leadership. North Carolina back country Scots and former Regulators joined forces in early 1776, but they were broken as a force at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge.

By July 4, 1776, the Patriots had gained control of virtually all territory in the Thirteen Colonies and expelled all royal officials. No one who openly proclaimed their loyalty to the Crown was allowed to remain, so Loyalists fled or kept quiet. Some of those who remained later gave aid to invading British armies or joined uniformed Loyalist regiments.

The British were forced out of Boston by March 17, 1776. They regrouped at Halifax and attacked New York in August, defeating George Washington's army at Long Island and capturing New York City and its vicinity, and they occupied the mouth of the Hudson River until 1783. British forces seized control of other cities, including Philadelphia (1777), Savannah, Georgia (1778-83), and Charleston, South Carolina (1780-82). But 90% of the colonial population lived outside the cities, with the effective result that Congress represented 80 to 90 percent of the population. The British removed their governors from colonies where the Patriots were in control, but Loyalist civilian government was re-established in coastal Georgia from 1779 to 1782, despite the presence of Patriot forces in the northern part of Georgia. Essentially, the British were only able to maintain power in areas where they had a strong military presence.

Historian Robert Calhoon wrote in 2000, concerning the proportion of Loyalists to Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies:

Historians' best estimates put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. Approximately half the colonists of European ancestry tried to avoid involvement in the struggle-some of them deliberate pacifists, others recent immigrants, and many more simple apolitical folk. The patriots received active support from perhaps 40 to 45 percent of the white populace, and at most no more than a bare majority.

A jury finding from Kentucky County, Virginia in July 1780, confiscating lands of two men adjudged to be British subject. Daniel Boone was listed as a member of the jury.

Before Calhoon's work, estimates of the Loyalist share of the population were somewhat higher, at about one-third, but these estimates are now rejected as too high by most scholars. In 1968 historian Paul H. Smith estimated there were about 400,000 Loyalists, or 16% of the white population of 2.25 million in 1780.

Historian Robert Middlekauff summarized scholarly research on the nature of Loyalist support as follows:

The largest number of loyalists were found in the middle colonies: many tenant farmers of New York supported the king, for example, as did many of the Dutch in the colony and in New Jersey. The Germans in Pennsylvania tried to stay out of the Revolution, just as many Quakers did, and when that failed, clung to the familiar connection rather than embrace the new. Highland Scots in the Carolinas, a fair number of Anglican clergy and their parishioners in Connecticut and New York, a few Presbyterians in the southern colonies, and a large number of the Iroquois stayed loyal to the king.

Johnson Hall, seat of Sir John Johnson in the Mohawk Valley

After the British military capture of New York City and Long Island it became the British military and political base of operations in North America from 1776 to 1783, prompting revolutionaries to flee and resulting in a large concentration of Loyalists, many of whom were refugees from other states.

According to Calhoon, Loyalists tended to be older and wealthier, but there were also many Loyalists of humble means. Many active Church of England members became Loyalists. Some recent arrivals from Britain, especially those from Scotland, had a high Loyalist proportion. Loyalists in the southern colonies were suppressed by the local Patriots, who controlled local and state government. Many people-including former Regulators in North Carolina-refused to join the rebellion, as they had earlier protested against corruption by local authorities who later became Revolutionary leaders. The oppression by the local Whigs during the Regulation led to many of the residents of backcountry North Carolina sitting out the Revolution or siding with the Loyalists.

In areas under Patriot control, Loyalists were subject to confiscation of property, and outspoken supporters of the king were threatened with public humiliation such as tarring and feathering, or physical attack. It is not known how many Loyalist civilians were harassed by the Patriots, but the treatment was a warning to other Loyalists not to take up arms. In September 1775, William Drayton and Loyalist leader Colonel Thomas Fletchall signed a treaty of neutrality in the interior community of Ninety Six, South Carolina. For actively aiding the British army when it occupied Philadelphia, two residents of the city were tried for treason, convicted, and executed by returning Patriot forces.

A Black Loyalist wood cutter at Shelburne, Nova Scotia in 1788

As a result of the looming crisis in 1775, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and slaves who were able to bear arms and join his Loyalist Ethiopian Regiment. Many of the slaves in the South joined the Loyalists with intentions of gaining freedom and escaping the South. About 800 did so; some helped rout the Virginia militia at the Battle of Kemp's Landing and fought in the Battle of Great Bridge on the Elizabeth River, wearing the motto "Liberty to Slaves", but this time they were defeated. The remains of their regiment were then involved in the evacuation of Norfolk, after which they served in the Chesapeake area. Eventually the camp that they had set up there suffered an outbreak of smallpox and other diseases. This took a heavy toll, putting many of them out of action for some time. The survivors joined other Loyalist units and continued to serve throughout the war. African-Americans were often the first to come forward to volunteer and a total of 12,000 African Americans served with the British from 1775 to 1783. This forced the Patriots to also offer freedom to those who would serve in the Continental Army, with thousands of Black Patriots serving in the Continental Army.

Americans who gained their freedom by fighting for the British became known as Black Loyalists. The British honored the pledge of freedom in New York City through the efforts of General Guy Carleton, who recorded the names of African Americans who had supported the British in a document called the Book of Negroes, which granted freedom to slaves who had escaped and assisted the British. About 4,000 Black Loyalists went to the British colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where they were promised land grants. They founded communities across the two provinces, many of which still exist today. Over 2,500 settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, instantly making it the largest free black community in North America. However, the long period of waiting time to be officially given land grants that were given to them and the prejudices of white Loyalists in nearby Shelburne who regularly harassed the settlement in events such as the Shelburne Riots in 1784, made life very difficult for the community. In 1791 the Sierra Leone Company offered to transport dissatisfied black Loyalists to the nascent colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa, with the promise of better land and more equality. About 1,200 left Nova Scotia for Sierra Leone, where they named the capital Freetown. After 1787 they became Sierra Leone's ruling elite during the colonial era and their descendants, the Sierra Leone Creoles, are the cultural elites of the nation. About 400 to 1,000 free blacks who joined the British side in the Revolution went to London and joined the free black community of about 10,000 there.

While men were out fighting for the Crown, women served at home protecting their land and property. At the end of the war, many loyalist men left America for the shelter of England, leaving their wives and daughters to protect their land. The main punishment for Loyalist families was the expropriation of property, but married women were protected under " feme covert", which meant that they had no political identity and their legal rights were absorbed by their husbands. This created an awkward dilemma for the confiscation committees: confiscating the land of such a woman would punish her for her husband's actions. In many cases, the women did not get a choice on if they were labeled a loyalist or a patriot; the label was dependent on their husband's political association. However, some women showed their loyalty to the crown by continually purchasing British goods, writing it down, and showing resistance to the Patriots. Grace Growden Galloway recorded the experience in her diary. Her writings show the difficulties that her family faced during the revolution. Galloway's property was seized by the Rebels and she spent the rest of her life fighting to regain it. It was returned to her heirs in 1783, after she and her husband had died.

Patriot allowed women to become involved in politics in a larger scale than the loyalist. Some women involved in political activity include Catharine Macaulay (a loyalist) and Mercy Otis Warren who were both writers during this time. Both women maintained a 20-year friendship although they wrote about different sides of the war. Macaulay wrote from a loyalist British perspective whereas Warren wrote about her support for the American Revolution. Macaulay's work include History of England and Warren wrote History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. Although both women's works were unpopular, during this time, it pushed them to learn from social critique.

Tory Refugees on their way to Canada by Howard Pyle

Rebel agents were active in Quebec (which was then frequently called "Canada", the name of the earlier French province) in the months leading to the outbreak of active hostilities. John Brown, an agent of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, worked with Canadian merchant Thomas Walker and other rebel sympathisers during the winter of 1774-1775 to convince inhabitants to support the actions of the First Continental Congress. However, many of Quebec's inhabitants remained neutral, resisting service to either the British or the Americans.

Although some Canadians took up arms in support of the rebellion, the majority remained loyal to the King. French Canadians had been satisfied by the British government's Quebec Act of 1774, which offered religious and linguistic toleration; in general, they did not sympathize with a rebellion that they saw as being led by Protestants from New England, who were their commercial rivals and hereditary enemies. Most of the English-speaking settlers had arrived following the British conquest of Canada in 1759-1760, and were unlikely to support separation from Britain. The older British colonies, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (including what is now New Brunswick) also remained loyal and contributed military forces in support of the Crown.

In late 1775 the Continental Army sent a force into Quebec, led by General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold, with the goal of convincing the residents of Quebec to join the Revolution. Although only a minority of Canadians openly expressed loyalty to King George, about 1,500 militia fought for the King in the Siege of Fort St. Jean. In the region south of Montreal that was occupied by the Continentals, some inhabitants supported the rebellion and raised two regiments to join the Patriot forces.

In Nova Scotia, there were many Yankee settlers originally from New England, and they generally supported the principles of the revolution. The allegiance toward the rebellion waned as American privateers raided Nova Scotia communities throughout the war. As well, the Nova Scotia government used the law to convict people for sedition and treason for supporting the rebel cause. There was also the influence of an influx of recent immigration from the British isles, and they remained neutral during the war, and the influx was greatest in Halifax. Britain in any case built up powerful forces at the naval base of Halifax after the failure of Jonathan Eddy to capture Fort Cumberland in 1776. Although the Continentals captured Montreal in November 1775, they were turned back a month later at Quebec City by a combination of the British military under Governor Guy Carleton, the difficult terrain and weather, and an indifferent local response. The Continental forces would be driven from Quebec in 1776, after the breakup of ice on the St. Lawrence River and the arrival of British transports in May and June. There would be no further serious attempt to challenge British control of present-day Canada until the War of 1812.

In 1777, 1,500 Loyalist militia took part in the Saratoga campaign in New York, and surrendered with General Burgoyne after the Battles of Saratoga in October. For the rest of the war, Quebec acted as a base for raiding expeditions, conducted primarily by Loyalists and Indians, against frontier communities.

The Loyalists rarely attempted any political organization. They were often passive unless regular British army units were in the area. The British, however, assumed a highly activist Loyalist community was ready to mobilize and planned much of their strategy around raising Loyalist regiments. The British provincial line, consisting of Americans enlisted on a regular army status, enrolled 19,000 Loyalists (50 units and 312 companies). The maximum strength of the Loyalist provincial line was 9,700 in December 1780. In all about 19,000 at one time or another were soldiers or militia in British forces. Loyalists from South Carolina fought for the British in the Battle of Camden. The British forces at the Battle of Monck's Corner and the Battle of Lenud's Ferry consisted entirely of Loyalists with the exception of the commanding officer ( Banastre Tarleton). Both white and black Loyalists fought for the British at the Battle of Kemp's Landing in Virginia.

Shelburne, Nova Scotia, a major early destination of Loyalist refugees

Estimates for how many Loyalists emigrated after the war differ. Historian Maya Jasanoff calculated 60,000 in total went to British North America, including about 50,000 whites, however Philip Ranlet estimates that only 20,000 adult white Loyalists went to Canada, while Wallace Brown cites about 80,000 Loyalists in total permanently left the United States.

According to Jasanoff, the majority of these Loyalists - 36,000 - went to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while about 6,600 went to Quebec and 2,000 to Prince Edward Island. About 5,090 white Loyalists went to Florida, bringing along their slaves who numbered about 8,285 (421 whites and 2,561 blacks returned to the States from Florida). When Florida was returned to Spain, however, very few Loyalists remained there. Approximately 6,000 whites went to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, notably the Bahamas, and about 13,000 went to Britain (including 5,000 free blacks). The total is 60-62,000 whites.

A precise figure cannot be known because the records were incomplete and inaccurate, and small numbers continued to leave after 1783. The 50,000 or so white departures represented about 10% of the Loyalists (at 20-25% of the white population). Loyalists (especially soldiers and former officials) could choose evacuation. Loyalists whose roots were not yet deeply embedded in the United States were more likely to leave; older people who had familial bonds and had acquired friends, property, and a degree of social respectability were more likely to remain in the US. The vast majority of the half-million white Loyalists, about 20-25% of the total number of whites, remained in the US. Starting in the mid-1780s a small percentage of those who had left returned to the United States. The exiles amounted to about 2% of the total US population of 3 million at the end of the war in 1783.

After 1783 some former Loyalists, especially Germans from Pennsylvania, emigrated to Canada to take advantage of the British government's offer of free land. Many departed the fledgling United States because they faced continuing hostility. In another migration-motivated mainly by economic rather than political reasons- more than 20,000 and perhaps as many as 30,000 "Late Loyalists" arrived in Ontario in the 1790s attracted by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's policy of land and low taxes, one-fifth those in the US and swearing an oath[when? ] of allegiance to the King.

The 36,000 or so who went to Nova Scotia were not well received by the 17,000 Nova Scotians, who were mostly descendants of New Englanders settled there before the Revolution. "They [the Loyalists]", Colonel Thomas Dundas wrote in 1786, "have experienced every possible injury from the old inhabitants of Nova Scotia, who are even more disaffected towards the British Government than any of the new States ever were. This makes me much doubt their remaining long dependent." In response, the colony of New Brunswick, until 1784 part of Nova Scotia, was created for the 14,000 who had settled in those parts. Of the 46,000 who went to Canada, 10,000 went to Quebec, especially what is now modern-day Ontario, the rest to Nova Scotia and PEI.

Realizing the importance of some type of consideration, on November 9, 1789, Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec, 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: U.E. Alluding to their great principle The Unity of the Empire.

The post-nominals "U.E." are rarely seen today, but the influence of the Loyalists on the evolution of Canada remains. Their ties to Britain and/or their antipathy to the United States provided the strength needed to keep Canada independent and distinct in North America. The Loyalists' basic distrust of republicanism and " mob rule" influenced Canada's gradual path to independence. The new British North American provinces of Upper Canada (the forerunner of Ontario) and New Brunswick were founded as places of refuge for the United Empire Loyalists.

In an interesting historical twist Peter Matthews, a son of Loyalists, participated in the Upper Canada Rebellion which sought relief from oligarchic British colonial government and pursued American style Republicanism. He was arrested, tried and executed in Toronto, and later became heralded as a patriot to the movement which led to Canadian self-governance.

The wealthiest and most prominent Loyalist exiles went to Great Britain to rebuild their careers; many received pensions. Many Southern Loyalists, taking along their slaves, went to the West Indies, particularly to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas.

Certain Loyalists who fled the United States brought their slaves with them to Canada (mostly to areas that later became Ontario and New Brunswick) where slavery was legal. An imperial law in 1790 assured prospective immigrants to Canada that their slaves would remain their property. However, a law enacted by eminent British lieutenant general and founder of modern Toronto John Graves Simcoe in 1793 entitled the Act Against Slavery tried to suppress slavery in Upper Canada by halting the sale of slaves to the United States, and by freeing slaves upon their escape from the latter into Canada. Simcoe desired to demonstrate the merits of loyalism and abolitionism in Upper Canada in contrast to the nascent republicanism and prominence of slavery in the United States, and, according to historian Stanley R. Mealing:

"...he had not only the most articulate faith in its imperial destiny but also the most sympathetic appreciation of the interests and aspirations of its inhabitants".

However the actual law was a compromise. According to historian Afua Cooper, Simcoe's law required children in slavery to be freed when they reached age 25 and:

forbade the importation of slaves but, to Simcoe's disappointment, did not grant freedom to adult slaves. Having not been freed by the act, many Canadian slaves fled across the border into the Old Northwest Territory, where slavery had been abolished.

Thousands of Iroquois and other Native Americans were expelled from New York and other states and resettled in Canada. The descendants of one such group of Iroquois, led by Joseph Brant (Thayendenegea), settled at Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada. (The remainder, under the leadership of Cornplanter (John Abeel) and members of his family, stayed in New York.) A group of African-American Loyalists settled in Nova Scotia but emigrated again for Sierra Leone after facing discrimination there.

Many of the Loyalists were forced to abandon substantial properties to America restoration of or compensation for these lost properties, which was a major issue during the negotiation of the Jay Treaty in 1794. Two successive boards were formed, and under a new convention signed in 1802 by the United States and Great Britain for the mutual payment of claims, the US paid the sum of £600,000, while only £1,420,000 of nearly £5 million in claims considered by commissioners in Britain were judged to be good.

The great majority of Loyalists never left the United States; they stayed on and were allowed to be citizens of the new country. Some became nationally prominent leaders, including Samuel Seabury, who was the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Tench Coxe. There was a small, but significant trickle of returnees who found life in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick too difficult. Perhaps 10% of the refugees to New Brunswick returned to the States as did an unknown number from Nova Scotia. Some Massachusetts Tories settled in the Maine District. Nevertheless, the vast majority never returned. Captain Benjamin Hallowell, who as Mandamus Councilor in Massachusetts served as the direct representative of the Crown, was considered by the insurgents as one of the most hated men in the Colony, but as a token of compensation when he returned from England in 1796, his son was allowed to regain the family house.

Alexander Hamilton enlisted the help of the Tories (ex-Loyalists) in New York in 1782-85 to forge an alliance with moderate Whigs to wrest the State from the power of the Clinton faction. Moderate Whigs in other States who had not been in favor of separation from Britain but preferred a negotiated settlement which would have maintained ties to the Mother Country mobilized to block radicals. Most States had rescinded anti-Tory laws by 1787, although the accusation of being a Tory was heard for another generation. Several hundred who had left for Florida returned to Georgia in 1783-84. South Carolina which had seen a bitter bloody internal civil war in 1780-82 adopted a policy of reconciliation that proved more moderate than any other state. About 4500 white Loyalists left when the war ended, but the majority remained behind. The state government successfully and quickly reincorporated the vast majority. During the war, pardons were offered to Loyalists who switched sides and joined the Patriot forces. Others were required to pay a 10% fine of the value of the property. The legislature named 232 Loyalists liable for the confiscation of their property, but most appealed and were forgiven. In Connecticut much to the disgust of the Radical Whigs the moderate Whigs were advertising in New York newspapers in 1782-83 that Tories who would make no trouble would be welcome on the grounds that their skills and money would help the State's economy. The Moderates prevailed. All anti-Tory laws were repealed in early 1783 except for the law relating to confiscated Tory estates: "... the problem of the loyalists after 1783 was resolved in their favor after the War of Independence ended." In 1787 the last of any discriminatory laws were rescinded.

The departure of so many royal officials, rich merchants and landed gentry destroyed the hierarchical networks that had dominated most of the colonies. A major result was that a Patriot/Whig elite supplanted royal officials and affluent Tories. In New York, the departure of key members of the De Lancey, De Peyster, Walton and Cruger families undercut the interlocking families that largely owned and controlled the Hudson Valley. Likewise in Pennsylvania, the departure of powerful families-Penn, Allen, Chew, Shippen-destroyed the cohesion of the old upper class there. Massachusetts passed an act banishing forty-six Boston merchants in 1778, including members of some of Boston's wealthiest families. The departure of families such as the Ervings, Winslows, Clarks, and Lloyds deprived Massachusetts of men who had hitherto been leaders of networks of family and clients. The bases of the men who replaced them were much different. One rich Patriot in Boston noted in 1779 that "fellows who would have cleaned my shoes five years ago, have amassed fortunes and are riding in chariots." New men became rich merchants but they shared a spirit of republican equality that replaced the former elitism.

The Patriot reliance on Catholic France for military, financial and diplomatic aid led to a sharp drop in anti-Catholic rhetoric. Indeed, the king replaced the pope as the demon Patriots had to fight against. Anti-Catholicism remained strong among Loyalists, some of whom went to Canada after the war most remained in the new nation. By the 1780s, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states that previously had been so hostile. "In the midst of war and crisis, New Englanders gave up not only their allegiance to Britain but one of their most dearly held prejudices."

John Singleton Copley painted many prominent Loyalists and produced an oil-on-canvas depiction of a soldier wearing the uniform of the Royal Ethiopian Regiment (a regiment composed of black Loyalist soldiers) in The Death of Major Pierson (1784).[74]

Benjamin West characterized the ethnic and economic diversity of the Loyalists in his Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783.[75] The original painting was lost, but a smaller version of it can be seen in the background of West's portrait of John Eardley Wilmot.[76]

Gilbert Stuart painted a portrait of James DeLancey around 1785. It stays in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a bequest of his descendant George DeLancey Harris, Jr. of New York City & Annapolis Royal, NS.[77]

John Copley's The Death of Major Pierson

Benjamin West's Reception as a detail of John Eardley Wilmot

The Adventures of Jonathan Corncob, Loyal American Refugee (1787) by Jonathan Corncob. According to Maya Jasanoff, "traveling to London to file a claim served as the opening gambit" for this "picaresque novel about the American Revolution".[78][79][80]

"Rip Van Winkle" (1819), short story by Washington Irving[81]

Oliver Wiswell (1940), a novel by Kenneth Roberts

Long Stanley, Wendy (2019). The Power to Deny: A Woman of the Revolution Novel. Carmenta Publishing. ISBN 978-1-951747-00-8. Well received historical fiction account of the life of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson

Allen, Thomas B. Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 496 pp. ISBN 978-0061241819

Andrews, Matthew Page, History of Maryland, Doubleday, New York (1929)

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (2nd ed. 1992) pp. 230-319.

---. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson: Loyalism and the Destruction of the First British Empire (1974), full scale biography of the most prominent Loyalist

Brown, Wallace. "The Loyalists and the American Revolution." History Today (Mar 1962), 12# 3, pp. 149-157.

Brown, Wallace. The King's Friends: The Composition and Motives of the American Loyalist Claimants (1966).

Calhoon, Robert M. "Loyalism and neutrality" in Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (1991); reprinted in Greene, Jack P.; Pole, J. R. (2008). A Companion to the American Revolution. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 235-247. ISBN 978-0470756447.

Calhoon, Robert M. The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (1973), the most detailed scholarly study

Calhoon, Robert M., Timothy M. Barnes and George A. Rawlyk, eds. Loyalists and Community in North America (1994).

Chopra, Ruma. Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America (2015)

Doré, Gilbert. "Why The Loyalists Lost," Early America Review (Winter 2000) online

Frazer, Gregg L. God Against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy's Case against the American Revolution Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018.[ISBN missing ]

Gould, Philip. Writing the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).[ISBN missing ]

Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (2011), a comprehensive treatment, winner of the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction and 2012 George Washington Book Prize

Jensen, Merrill. The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781-1789 1950; detailed discussion of return of Loyalists, popular anger at their return; repeal of wartime laws against them

Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1997)

Knowles, Norman. Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts (1997) explores the identities and loyalties of those who moved to Canada.

Lambert, Robert Stansbury. South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution (2nd ed. Clemson University Digital Press, 2011). full text online 273 pp

Lennox, Jeffers. North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2022) online review

Middlekauff, Robert. "The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789." (2005 edition)

Moore, Christopher. The Loyalist: Revolution Exile Settlement. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart (1994).

Mason, Keith. "The American Loyalist Diaspora and the Reconfiguration of the British Atlantic World." In Empire and Nation: The American Revolution and the Atlantic World, ed. Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf (2005).

Minty, Christopher F. Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the American Revolution in New York City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023.

Nelson, William H. The American Tory (1961)

Norton, Mary Beth. The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

---. Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (1996)

---. "The Problem of the Loyalist - and the Problems of Loyalist Historians," Reviews in American History June 1974 v. 2 #2 pp 226-231

Peck, Epaphroditus; The Loyalists of Connecticut (Yale University Press, 1934)

Potter, Janice. The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (1983).

Quarles, Benjamin; Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography University of Massachusetts Press. (1988)

Ranlet, Philip. "How Many American Loyalists Left the United States?." Historian 76.2 (2014): 278-307; estimates that only 20,000 adult white Loyalists went to Canada.

Ryerson, Egerton. The Loyalists of America and Their Times: From 1620 to 1816. 2 volumes. 2nd ed., 1880.

Smith, Paul H. "The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organization and Numerical Strength," William and Mary Quarterly 25 (1968): 259-277. in JSTOR

Van Tyne, Claude Halstead. The Loyalists in the American Revolution (1902)

Wade, Mason. The French Canadians: 1760-1945 (1955) 2 vol.

Sabine, Lorenzo. The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in The War of the Revolution; Alphabetically Arranged; with a Preliminary Historical Essay. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1847. Google Books vi, 733 pp.

"Boucher, Jonathan" . Dictionary of National Biography. 1885-1900.

Gainey, Joseph R. "Rev. Charles Woodmason (c. 1720-1789): Author, Loyalist, Missionary, and Psalmodist." West Gallery: The Newsletter of the West Gallery Music Association (ISSN 0960-4227), Issue No. 59 (Autumn 2011), pp. 18-25. This undocumented article is the first publication to identify Woodmason's parents, background, baptism, marriage, and burial dates and places and contains much previously unavailable information.

Lohrenz, Otto; "The Advantage of Rank and Status: Thomas Price, a Loyalist Parson of Revolutionary Virginia." The Historian. 60#3 (1998) pp 561+.

Randall, Willard Sterne. A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin & His Son Little, Brown & Co, 1984.

Skemp, Sheila. William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King Oxford University Press, 1990.

Wright, J. Leitch. William Augusutus Bowles: Director General of the Creek Nation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1967.

Zimmer, Anne Y. Jonathan Boucher, loyalist in exile. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1978.

Primary sources and guides to manuscripts and the literature

Brown, Wallace. "Loyalist Historiography." Acadiensis, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn 1974), pp. 133-138. Link to downloadable pdf of this article.

---. "The View at Two Hundred Years: The Loyalists of the American Revolution", Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 80, Part 1 (April 1970), pp. 25-47.

Crary, Catherine S., ed. Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era (1973)

Egerton, Hugh Edward, ed. The Royal commission on the losses and services of American loyalists, 1783 to 1785, being the notes of Mr. Daniel Parker Coke, M. P., one of the commissioners during that period. Oxford: The Roxburghe Club, 1915. Link to downloadable pdf

Galloway, Joseph. The claim of the American loyalists: reviewed and maintained upon incontrovertible principles of law and justice. G. and T. Wilkie, 1788. Downloadable Google Books pdf 138 pages

Guide to The Loyalist Collection website, Harriet Irving Library, Fredericton campus, University of New Brunswick, Canada

Guide to the New York Public Library Loyalist Collection (19 pdfs)

Palmer, Gregory S. A Bibliography of Loyalist Source Material in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Westport, CT, 1982.

The Particular Case of the Georgia Loyalists: in Addition to the General Case and Claim of the American Loyalists, which was Lately Published by Order of Their Agents. February 1783. n.p., 1783. 16 pp. Google Books pdf

American Loyalists

The American Loyalists: Or, Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the ... (1847) by Lorenzo Sabine. Complete text of the first of two editions (the second appeared in 1864 in two volumes) of Sabine's magnum opus in pdf format.

Benjamin Franklin to Baron Francis Maseres, June 26, 1785 (Opinion of Benjamin Franklin on persons who called themselves "Loyalists", whom he judged better called "Royalists")

Bibliography of the Loyalist Participation in the American Revolution compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History

"Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People"

Haldimand Collection The main source for historians in the study of the settlement of the American Loyalists in Canada. More than 20,000 letters and documents, now fully indexed, and free on the Web.

Story of Loyalist Privateer "Vengeance"

James Chalmers and "Plain Truth" (A Loyalist Answers Thomas Paine)

The Loyalist Declaration of Independence published in The Royal Gazette (New York) on November 17, 1781 (Transcription provided by Bruce Wallace and posted on The On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies.)

The Loyalist Link: The Forest and The Sea - Port Roseway Loyalists

Loyalist Page - Cyndi's List

The Loyalist Research Network (LRN) Archived 2013-06-11 at the Wayback Machine This website focuses on Canadian Loyalists, but, the links and bibliographies are extremely helpful to all serious Loyalist researchers.

The On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies

"Remembering Black Loyalists, Black Communities in Nova Scotia"

"Salem Loyalists-unpublished letters" THE NEW-ENGLAND HISTORICAL AND GEUEALOGICAL REGISTER AND ANTIQUARIAN JOURNAL 1872 pp.243-248

"A Short History of the United Empire Loyalists" Ann Mackenzie

South Carolina

Lambert, Robert Stansbury (2011). South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution (2nd ed.). Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press. Originally published in 1987. 272 pages, available online in PDF format.

United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada (UELAC)

"What is a Loyalist? The American Revolution as civil war" by Prof. Edward Larkin published in www.common-place.org, Vol. 8, No. 1 (October 2007).

Why Were Some of Our Ancestors Tories?

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Loyalist (American Revolution) - Wikipedia

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Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriots, who supported the revolution, and called them "persons inimical to the liberties of America."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Metis is complex and contentious, and has different historical and contemporary meanings. The term is used to describe communities of mixed European and Indigenous descent across Canada, and a specific community of people — defined as the Métis Nation — which originated largely in Western Canada and emerged as a political force in the 19th century, radiating outwards from the Red River Settlement. While the Canadian government politically marginalized the Métis after 1885, they have since been recognized as an Aboriginal people with rights enshrined in the Constitution of Canada and more clearly defined in a series of Supreme Court of Canada decisions.The Métis people were calm individuals and did not strive for conflict.

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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Peggy Pompadore was an enslaved woman who was owned by Peter Russell, one of Canada's founding fathers.

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About Peggy Peter Russell Peter Russell put up the ad about Peggy and her kids in Upper Canada Gazette on February 10 1806 Juliana M. and Tyler C. Peggy Pompadour was an enslaved woman who was owned by Peter Russell, one of Canada's founding fathers. She had 3 children named

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James Douglas was a surgeon .School of Medicine after a 5-year apprenticeship with Dr Thomas Law in Prithee, England, Douglas was admitted to the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in 1819 and to the London College of Surgeons in 1820. After practicing in India, he came to Quebec City in 1826 and around 1837 was given charge of the Marine and Emigrant Hospital, practicing and teaching there.In 1845 he acquired the first Quebec asylum for the mentally ill, the Center hospitalier Robert Giffard at BEAU PORT. Because of respiratory problems, he spent winters in Italy, Palestine or Egypt and in 1875 moved to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. He is buried at Mount Harmon Cemetery, Sillery, Quebec. The mental asylum of VERDUN is now called the Douglas Hospital.

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James Douglas | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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History, politics, arts, science & more: the Canadian Encyclopedia is your reference on Canada. Articles, timelines & resources for teachers, students & public.

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Grace Marks was born in Ireland and her family immigrated to Canada, well on the way to Canada her mother died on the boat and was buried at sea . She was only 16 when she was accused and convicted of the double murder of Thomas Kinnear and his housewife Nancy Montgomery. The only people in the house f the murder was her and the stable keeper. the stable keeper was hung for the crime. But because of Grace Marks gender and age she was sentenced to life in prison.

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Margaret Atwood has a second high-profile adaptation of one of her novels coming to a streaming service this year with the Netflix premiere of Alias Grace. It follows the hugely successful Hulu run of the Emmy Award-showered adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, breathing new life into Atwood's decades-old novels. Her second book to be adapted is Alias Grace, which was first published in 1996. It's a dramatized account of the life of a real Irish-Canadian maid who was convicted of murdering her employer in 1843. So what happened to the real Grace Marks? Her story is fascinating.

One of eight siblings (and three more still-born ones), Marks first immigrated to Canada with her family when she was just 12 years old. Her mother died aboard the ship during their voyage to North America and was buried at sea. Her father worked as a stonemason and was an abusive alcoholic, making her story even more tragic. She was convicted of murder just three years later, at the age of 16. What happened in between makes up the bulk of Alias Grace, as Grace tells her autobiography to a character of Atwood's invention named Dr. Simon Jordan. He's an early psychologist of sorts with aspirations of opening up his own asylum, and he's brought in by people who believe Grace is innocent to help her recall the events from the day of the murder, which she claims not to remember because she had fainted.

Marks' employer was a wealthy Ontario farmer named Thomas Kinnear, and on July 23, 1843, he and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery were found murdered. The only other people living in the house were Marks, who worked as the maid, and James McDermott, the stable hand. McDermott was convicted for the murders as well, and he was hanged for his crimes. Marks was convicted, but because of her young age and gender, she was sentenced to life in prison. She initially went to an asylum but was later moved to a penitentiary, where she served almost 30 years before being pardoned. Following her release, she moved to upstate New York and no further records of her were ever kept.

And although the mere fact of Marks claiming amnesia doesn't seem like a compelling defense, there are much deeper secrets buried in the house which Atwood aimed to uncover.

Brian de Rivera Simon/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

She wrote in the book's afterword:

The details were sensational: Grace Marks was uncommonly pretty and also extremely young; Kinnear's housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, had previously given birth to an illegitimate child and was Thomas Kinnear's mistress; at her autopsy she was found to be pregnant. Grace and her fellow servant James McDermott had run away to the United States together and were assumed by the press to be lovers. The combination of sex, violence and the deplorable insubordination of the lower classes was most attractive to the journalists of the day.

And before working in the Kinnear home, Marks had a job working for a wealthy Toronto couple, which she had to quit because she found out their son had impregnated her best friend and then induced an abortion that killed her.

As with The Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace explores how men and women relate, the social consequences of womanhood, and perceptions of consciousness and reality. Grace Marks' story has horrific details which complicate her conviction, and the miniseries, although it's a period drama, is a super contemporary blend of true crime dramatizations and misogynist dystopia. You can catch the series, which was dropped on Netflix on Friday, Nov. 3.

Watch Romper's new video series, Romper's Doula Diaries:
Check out the entire Romper's Doula Diaries series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

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'Alias Grace' Explores Grace Mark's Complicated Life

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Margaret Atwood has a second high-profile adaptation of one of her novels coming to a streaming service this year with the Netflix premiere of Alias Grace. It follows the hugely successful Hulu run of the Emmy Award-showered adaptation of The...

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Was born in Montreal on Oct. 7, 1786. In 1808 he was elected to the House of Assembly of Lower Canada. Papineau, when he helped foment an unsuccessful revolt of the French Canadians against British rule.

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Sir John Alexander MacDonald, was the first priminister of Canada he was a lawyer,businessman man and politician. John had a creative and powerful mind that produced the British North America act in the union of provinces that formed Canada.he oversaw the expansion of the Dominion from sea to sea. His government dominated politics for a half century and set policy goals for future generations of political leaders. MacDonald's personal papers provide insight into his life, but his exact birth date remains a mystery. His father's journal lists 11 January 1815 as MacDonald's birth date and his family celebrated his birthday on 11 January. However, a certified extract from the registration of his birth cites 10 January. MacDonald was brought to Kingston, Upper Canada, by his parents, Hugh MacDonald and Helen Shaw, when he was five years old. His father opened up shops around the city

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Sir John Alexander Macdonald, lawyer, businessman and the first prime minister of Canada (photo by William James Topley, courtesy Library and Archives Canada/c-10144).

Early Life and Education

Macdonald's personal papers provide insight into his life, but his exact birth date remains a mystery. His father's journal lists 11 January 1815 as Macdonald's birth date and his family celebrated his birthday on 11 January. However, a certified extract from the registration of his birth cites 10 January. Macdonald was brought to Kingston, Upper Canada, by his parents, Hugh Macdonald and Helen Shaw, when he was five years old. As his father opened a series of businesses in the area, Macdonald grew up in Kingston, and in the nearby Lennox, Addington, and Prince Edward counties. Macdonald attended the Midland District Grammar School, as well as a private school in Kingston, where he was educated in rhetoric, Latin, Greek, grammar, arithmetic and geography.

Early Career

At age 15 Macdonald began to article with a prominent Kingston lawyer. Both at school and as an articling student, he showed promise. At 17 he managed a branch legal office in Napanee by himself, and at 19 opened his own office in Kingston, two years before being called to the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Macdonald's early professional career coincided with the rebellion in Upper Canada and subsequent border raids from the US. He was in Toronto in December 1837 where, as a militia private, he took part in the attack on the rebels at Montgomery's Tavern. In 1838 he attracted public notice by defending accused rebels, including Nils von Schoultz, leader of an attack on Prescott.

Credit: Library and Archives Canada/C-009267.

Legal Career and Business Interests

Macdonald practised law for the rest of his life with a series of partners, first in Kingston (until 1874) and then in Toronto. His firm engaged primarily in commercial law; his most valued clients were established businessmen or corporations. He was also personally involved in a variety of business concerns. He began to deal in real estate in the 1840s, acquired land in many parts of the province - including commercial rental property in downtown Toronto - and was appointed director of many companies (which were located mainly in Kingston). For 25 years (including the years when he was prime minister), he was president of a Québec City firm - the St Lawrence Warehouse, Dock and Wharfage Co - and in 1887 he became the first president of the Manufacturers Life Insurance Co of Toronto.

Personal Life

Macdonald's personal life was marked by a number of misfortunes. His first wife, his cousin Isabella Clark, was an invalid during most of their married life and died in 1857. His first son died at the age of 13 months, while a second son, Hugh John (born in 1850) survived. In 1867, Macdonald married Susan Agnes Bernard, who gave birth in 1869 to a daughter, Mary. Sadly, Mary was afflicted with hydrocephalus and never walked, although she lived to 1933.

Door to Politics Opens

Macdonald entered politics at the municipal level, serving as alderman in Kingston 1843-46. He took an increasingly active part in Conservative politics and in 1844 (at age 29) was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada to represent Kingston. Parties and government were in a state of transition; a modern departmental structure had begun to evolve, but the British government had not yet agreed to responsible government in British North America, and the role of the Governor General was still prominent.

In this context Macdonald's political views proved cautious; he defended the imperial prerogative and state support of denominational education, and opposed the abolition of primogeniture (which stipulated that when a property owner died without leaving a will, his eldest son would inherit everything). Above all, he emerged as a shrewd political tactician who believed in the pursuit of practical goals by practical means. His obvious intelligence and ability brought him his first Cabinet post as receiver general in 1847 in the administration of W.H. Draper, which was defeated in the general election that year.

Macdonald remained in Opposition until the election of 1854, after which he was involved in the creation of a new political alliance, the Liberal-Conservative Party. This new party brought together the Conservatives with an already existing alliance between Upper Canadian Reformers and the French Canadian majority political bloc, the .

"The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The Old Leader," poster published by the Industrial League to appeal to the old ways on which Macdonald built the power of the Conservative Party (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-6536).

Premier of the Province of Canada

Once returned to office, Macdonald assumed the prestigious post of attorney general of Upper Canada. On the retirement of Conservative leader Sir Allan Macnab (which he helped to engineer in 1856), Macdonald succeeded him as joint-premier of the Province of Canada, along with Étienne-Paschal Taché (and then with George-Étienne Cartier 1857-62, with the exception of the two-day Brown- Dorion administration in 1858).

Macdonald and Confederation

During the years 1854-64 Macdonald faced growing opposition in Canada West (formerly Upper Canada) to the political union with Canada East (formerly Lower Canada); in 1841 the Province of Canada had been created, uniting the two colonies under one parliament. The Reform view, voiced by George Brown of the Toronto Globe, complained that the legitimate needs and aspirations of Canada West were frustrated by the "domination" of French Canadian influence in the government of Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. By 1864 the political and sectional forces in the province were deadlocked, and Macdonald reluctantly accepted Brown's proposal for a new coalition of Conservatives, Clear Grits, and Bleus, who would work together for constitutional change. Macdonald and the coalition played a key role in the Confederation of British North America in 1867, which brought together four new provinces ( Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia) to form the Dominion of Canada.

Credit: Library and Archives Canada/ARCH Rare NC1445 B4 fol.

While conceding the necessity of a federal arrangement to accommodate strong racial, religious and regional differences, Macdonald's preference was for a strong, highly centralized, unitary form of government. Macdonald took a leading role in the drafting of a federal system in which the central government held unmistakable dominance over the provincial governments. His great constitutional expertise, ability and knowledge were quickly recognized by the imperial government. Lord Monck, former Governor General of the Province of Canada, and the first Governor General of the Dominion, appointed Macdonald as the first prime minister of Canada on 1 July 1867. Macdonald was also created Knight Commander of the Bath, becoming Sir John A. Macdonald.

The Nation Builder

During his first administration 1867-73, Macdonald became a "nation builder." In this period Manitoba, the North-West Territories (present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta), British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island joined the original four provinces of Confederation. The Intercolonial Railway between Québec City and Halifax was begun and plans were made for a transcontinental railway to the Pacific coast. These undertakings involved unprecedented expenditures of public funds and did not proceed without incident. Manitoba entered the union following an insurrection led by Louis Riel against the takeover of the area by the Dominion government, thereby forcing Macdonald's government to grant provincial status much sooner than had been intended and to accept a system of separate schools and the equality of the French and English languages.

The Pacific Scandal

Macdonald's involvement in the negotiations for a contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia involved him eventually in the Pacific Scandal. During the 1872 election large campaign contributions had been made to him and his colleagues by Sir Hugh Allan, who was to have headed the railway syndicate. Macdonald claimed that his "hands were clean" because he had not profited personally from his association with Allan, but his government was forced to resign in late 1873 and in the election of 1874 was defeated. Some of these political problems stemmed from the fact that he, like many of his contemporaries, was at times a heavy drinker. By his own admission, Macdonald could not recall periods of time during the 1872 election and the negotiations with Allan. His drinking subsequently became more moderate.

Print by John Henry Walker, 1850-1885. Credit: McCord Museum/M930.50.6.5:.

Return to Power

Fortunately for Macdonald his defeat in 1874 coincided with the onset of a business depression in Canada, which gave the Liberal administration of Alexander Mackenzie a reputation for being ineffectual. In 1876, at the instigation of a group of Montréal manufacturers, Macdonald began to advocate a policy of "readjustment" of the tariff - a policy that helped him return triumphantly to power in 1878. He remained prime minister for the rest of his life.

National Policy

The promised changes in tariff policy were introduced in 1879 and frequently revised in close collaboration with leading manufacturers; this became the basis for Macdonald's National Policy, a system which protected Canadian manufacturing through the imposition of high tariffs on foreign imports, especially from the United States. Appealing to Canadian nationalist and anti-American sentiment, it became a permanent feature of Canadian economic and political life. However, the economy as a whole continued to suffer slow growth, and the effects of the policy were uneven.

First published in Grip, September 28th, 1878.

The Canadian Pacific Railway

The great national project of Macdonald's second administration was the completion of the transcontinental CPR, an extremely difficult and expensive undertaking that required extensive government subsidization. Macdonald played a central role in making the railway a reality. He was involved in awarding the contract to a new syndicate headed by George Stephen, which called for a government subsidy of $25 million and 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of land, and on two occasions, in 1884 and 1885, he agreed to introduce legislation for the further financial support of the railway. Its completion in November 1885 made possible the future settlement of the West ( see Canadian Pacific Railway).

Canada's Growing Autonomy

The physical linking of the Canadian community was accompanied by the first steps towards eventual autonomy in world affairs. Macdonald did not foresee Canadian independence from Britain but rather a partnership with the mother country. Yet during his time in office Canada moved closer to independence. Macdonald himself represented Canada on the British commission that negotiated the Treaty of Washington of 1871. In 1880, the post of Canadian high commissioner to Britain was created, and in 1887 Finance Minister Charles Tupper represented Canada at the Joint High Commission in Washington.

Challenges

The last stage of Macdonald's public career was plagued by difficulties. The North-West Resistance occurred when Macdonald himself was superintendent general of Indian Affairs. The subsequent execution of Louis Riel in 1885 greatly increased animosity between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians, and cost Macdonald political support in Québec, where Riel was regarded as a martyr to the forces of Anglo-Saxon imperialism. In addition, Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat launched a series of successful legal challenges to the powers of the central government, resulting in a federal system that was much less centralized than Macdonald had intended. The federal power of disallowance, which enabled the federal Cabinet to cancel provincial legislation, had been freely used during the early days of the Dominion, but was virtually abandoned by the end of the 19th century due to provincial opposition.

Legacy

Macdonald's contribution to the development of the Canadian nation far exceeded that of any of his contemporaries, yet he was not by nature an innovator. Confederation, the CPR, and the protective tariff were not his ideas, but he was brilliant and tenacious in achieving his goals once convinced of their necessity. As a politician he early developed shrewdness and ingenuity. He kept a remarkable degree of personal control over the functioning of the Conservative party and was adept in using patronage for political advantage. He was a highly partisan politician, partly because he genuinely believed it was essential to maintain certain political courses. He was particularly concerned with maintaining the British connection to Canada - including the tradition of parliamentary supremacy - against the threat of American economic and political influences, such as the doctrine of constitutional supremacy.

Credit: Harold M. Daly/Library and Archives Canada/C-002079.

Macdonald was an Anglophile, but he also became a Canadian nationalist who had great faith in the future of Canada. His nationalism was primarily central Canadian and English Canadian; his concern with Québec was largely political. He accepted the existence of a unique French Canadian community and especially a French Canadian claim to a due share of government patronage, but after Cartier's death in 1873 he did not share equal political power with a strong "Québec lieutenant," nor did he give senior Cabinet positions to French Canadian politicians. His overriding national preoccupations were unity and prosperity. An 1860 speech summed up his lifelong political creed and political goals: "One people, great in territory, great in resources, great in enterprise, great in credit, great in capital."

Indigenous Policy

As both prime minister and minister of Indian Affairs, Macdonald was responsible for Indigenous policy, including the development of the residential school system and increasingly repressive measures against Indigenous populations in the West. To Macdonald, the building of the CPR took priority over almost everything else. According to historian James Daschuk, Canadian officials withheld food from Indigenous people until they moved to reserves, thus clearing the land needed for railway construction - thousands died.

Yet, Macdonald also tried to extend the federal vote to all Indigenous males, as long as they met the same conditions as other British subjects. Under his proposal, they would not have to give up Indian status in order to vote (as was the case under previous legislation). Macdonald's proposal was controversial, and the final Electoral Franchise Act of 1885 was a compromise. The Act extended the vote to Indigenous men who lived on reserves if they owned land and had made at least $150 worth of improvements to their property. However, it excluded all Indigenous men in the West - this was likely influenced by the North-West Resistance of 1885. In 1898, the legislation was repealed and many Indigenous men were again disqualified.

Chinese Immigration

Although Macdonald proposed extending the vote to all Indigenous males, he at the same time passed legislation to exclude those of Chinese origin.

In the 1880s, around 15,000 Chinese labourers helped to build the Canadian Pacific Railway - working in harsh conditions for little pay, they suffered greatly and historians estimate that at least 600 died. Their employment had caused controversy, particularly in British Columbia, where politicians worried about the potential economic and cultural impact of this influx of Chinese workers. Macdonald, however, defended their employment in constructing the railway.

As the project neared completion, though, Macdonald and the Canadian government excluded "persons of Mongolian or Chinese race" from voting, because they had "no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations" ( Electoral Franchise Act, 1885). The same year, they passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which stated that anyone of Chinese origin had to pay a "head tax" of $50 upon entering the country.

Macdonald's policies and his personal views about Chinese immigration have been hotly debated. While some have accused him of racism, others argue that he was quite progressive by the standards of the time. As Richard Gwyn has pointed out, some criticized him at the time for being too moderate - in comparison, the United States had banned all Chinese immigration in 1882 - and the Canadian government under Liberal leader Sir Wilfrid Laurier soon increased the head tax to $500 in 1903.

Two hundred years after Macdonald's birth, we have a more complex and more complete picture of Canada's first prime minister. One of the most influential and important Canadians of all time, Macdonald was not without flaws. New generations and scholars continue to examine and debate his political ruthlessness, as well as his Indigenous policies and his approach to Chinese immigration. For good and ill, Macdonald helped make Canada what it is today.

See also Prime Ministers of Canada: Table.

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Sir John Alexander Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada (1867-73, 1878-91), lawyer, businessman, politician, (born 10 or 11 Jan 1815 in Glasgow, Scotla...

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The anti slavery and abolitionist movement was a social and political push for the immediate independence for all slaves and the end of racial hatred and isolation.
push for  independence separated abolitionists from more balanced anti- slavery advocate, who argued for gradual independence.

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General James Wolfe born 1727 and died 1759. General James Wolfe's fight that led him to his death was the battle of the plains of Abraham, this started with General James Wolfe who led a huge group of British soldiers to the Quebec fortress were they would begin there attack starting from the bottom of the hill moving up to the top, once they made it they began there attack without any hesitation they got behind what was known as the plains of Abraham and got into formation, soon after Moncton came with his men this was about to be the battle of the plains of Abraham. When this was done both Moncton and James Wolfe were dead but General James Wolfe did not die in vain, because his troops carried out his mission and won.

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Worlds Collide | Canada: The Story of Us, Full Episode 1

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Peggy Pompadour was a black slave in the 18th century who was property of Peter Russel. her and her family were beaten and whipped like most slaves at the time. She had three children Jupiter,Amy, and Milly. Her husband was a free African-Canadian and all there children were born slaves. She was accused of fighting back because of her abuse. She could not take it anymore so she and her son left the Russel family. She was significant because she new slavery was wrong and thought everybody was equal and she fought for her race and paled a role in black peoples rights.

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Slavery existed throughout Canada and was just as brutal as slavery in America or Anywhere else Africans were enslaved by white people. Enslaved African were not allowed to name themselves or their children, they language or practice their spiritual beliefs.

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In the years between the American revolution and the war of 1812. Many loyalists ( colonies were very loyal to there king) after they had enough and made there way to the north of the united sates and settled in Canada's and other colonies. The immigration caused upper Canada to grow rapidly. the British army officer's were based in fort Niagara, fort York, fort George, fort Eire, and Kingston.

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Loyalists in Canada | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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History, politics, arts, science & more: the Canadian Encyclopedia is your reference on Canada. Articles, timelines & resources for teachers, students & public.

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John Ware Was An African-American Cowboy put in slavery because he was amazing at taming and training horses and people used that to their advantage. He was put in slavery near Georgetown South Carolina.
He had a wife and two kids at the time.

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Sir Isaac Brock was a military commander and a administer of upper Canada.Issac Brook went to school at Guernsey, Southampton in England and Rotterdam. at age 15 he entered the army by buying a commission in the 8th king Regiment of Foot.He transferred to the 49th regiment in 1791 after he showed willingness to take a calculated risk.Another officer who was a duelist and dead-shot challenged Brock to a duel and Brock accepted.He declared a deal with the officer that they would meet on equal terms and he produced a handkerchief and said "we will not duel on regular ranges but on the handkerchief.His opponent soon declined after the regiment that they declared.After that Brock seemed to have a sense of what others would do primarily opponents and how they might respond to a certain action,that was what made him a good military commander and administrator.

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Early Life and Education

Isaac Brock was educated in Guernsey, Southampton (England) and Rotterdam. At age 15 he entered the army by buying a commission in the 8th (King's) Regiment of Foot. He transferred to the 49th Regiment in 1791 and soon after demonstrated his willingness to take a calculated risk.

Did You Know?
An officer in the 49th Regiment, who was both "a confirmed duelist" and a dead shot, challenged Brock. Being tall, Brock knew that he would present an easy target at the usual distance of 12 paces apart. As they prepared for the duel, he demanded that they meet on equal terms. For this purpose, he produced a handkerchief and insisted they fire at each other, not from the usual distance apart, but across the handkerchief. His antagonist declined and soon after left the regiment. Brock seemed to possess almost uncanny insight into what others - particularly opponents - were thinking and how they might respond to determined action.

Brock's military career advanced another step in 1797 when he bought a commission as lieutenant colonel and became the regiment's commanding officer. His brother, William, loaned him the money to buy commissions - a common practice in the British army of that time - and, later, when William went bankrupt, Brock was faced with the problem of paying off his debt.

Arrival in Canada and War of 1812

He arrived in Canada in 1802 with the 49th and was promoted to major general in 1811. With the forthcoming departure of Francis Gore, he was appointed president of the executive council of Upper Canada (administrator) and commander of the forces there.

At the outset of the War of 1812, he took the bold initiative of ordering the capture of the American Fort Mackinac. ( See also Battle of Mackinac Island.)

Tecumseh and the Capture of Detroit

Major General William Hull had invaded Upper Canada in July, but withdrew to Fort Detroit upon learning that Brock was leading troops to that front. He arrived at Fort Amherstburg and knew from captured correspondence about serious dissension among Hull's officers and Hull's increasing fear of defeat.

Brock met Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and the two became firm allies. Brock decided to act quickly before Hull received reinforcements. On the night of 15-16 August, Tecumseh and his warriors crossed the Detroit River to be followed early the next morning by Brock and his troops. Brock's intention was to form up his troops and hope Hull would come out of his strong, well-armed fort to fight in the open. But, on hearing of American troops at his rear, Brock decided on immediate attack. He led his troops forward even though all they could see facing them as they approached were two 24-pounder guns, their gunners standing by with their matches burning.

Brock was urged to let his officers precede him and he refused because he would never ask his men to go where he would not lead them. He was counting on Hull to back down and he was right. Without consulting anyone, the American general ordered the gunners not to fire, had a white flag raised in the fort, and sent two officers to ask for terms. Brock sent his aides Colonel MacDonell and Captain Glegg into the fort, where they negotiated Hull's total surrender.

Afterwards, there was some criticism that Brock had acted rashly but in a letter to his brothers, he asserted that he had proceeded "from a cool calculation of the pours and contres." His calculated risk produced a completely unexpected victory with the capture of an American army, fort, and territory (Michigan), as well as great quantities of war materiel. A mood of defeatism in Upper Canada changed to optimism that the troops, militia and Indigenous allies could defend the province.

Battle of Queenston Heights and Death

When the Americans invaded again at Queenston Heights, Brock was awakened from sleep at Fort George and rode hastily to the village. Almost as soon as he arrived, the Americans seized a gun battery on the heights. Brock decided a direct attack was needed immediately without time to wait for reinforcements. His calculated risk proved to be rash, for as he led his troops he was hit in the chest by a shot from an American soldier. Brock died instantly without delivering any of the final words (such as "Push on brave York Volunteers") that have been attributed to him. ( See also Canadian Music from Wars and Armed Conflicts.)

Commemoration

The memory of Brock, the hero of Upper Canada, remains extraordinarily strong in Ontario history. His body, interred at Fort George, was moved in 1824 to the summit of Queenston Heights under an imposing monument, which was destroyed in 1840, but replaced in 1853. Today, the stately Brock's Monument dominates the battlefield. Brock University, founded in 1964 in St Catharines, Ontario, is named after Isaac Brock.

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Sir Isaac Brock, military commander, administrator of Upper Canada (born 6 October 1769 in St Peter Port, Guernsey, England; died 13 October 1812 in Queenston H...

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The underground railway
The underground railway was a secret network who helped the African Americans escape from enslavement in the south of America. The underground railway was the biggest slavery escape ever . https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/underground-railroad