The name United Empire Loyalists is an honorific name given after the fact to those American Loyalists who resettled in British North America and other British Colonies as an act of fealty to King George III after the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War and prior to the Treaty of Paris. Some sought to recover fortunes (land and private property) lost under laws enacted by the Continental Congress to finance the revolution with confiscated properties. Most, however, are believed to have gone north because the British offered them free land, or because they rejected the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which they regarded as anarchistic. A portion of the Loyalists were recent settlers in the 13 colonies and had few economic or social ties to leave, while many others were prominent Americans, whose ancestors had originally settled in the early 1600s. Many had lost everything in the revolution.
These Loyalists settled in what was initially Quebec (including the Eastern Townships) and modern-day Ontario, where they received land grants of 200 acres (0.81 km2) per person, and in Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick). Their arrival marked the beginning of a predominantly English-speaking population in the future Canada west and east of the Quebec border. Many Loyalists from the American South brought their slaves with them because slavery was legal in Canada. An imperial law in 1790 assured prospective immigrants to Canada that their slaves would remain their property. However most black Loyalists were free, having been given their freedom from slavery by fighting for the British or joining British lines during the Revolution. The government helped them resettle in Canada as well, transporting nearly 3500 free blacks to New Brunswick.[1]
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During the American Revolution, a significant proportion of the population of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, East Florida, West Florida and other colonies remained loyal to the Crown. They later chose or were forced to flee to the protection of their King, within the British Empire. The reasons were as varied as the people themselves, but primary reasons were either loyalty to the King and unwillingness to rebel against the Crown, or the belief in peaceful and evolutionary independence (as occurred in Canada under the impetus of the resettled U.S. Loyalists). As Daniel Bliss of Concord, Mass (who later became a Chief Justice of New Brunswick) stated, "Better to live under one tyrant a thousand miles away, then a thousand tyrants one mile away." Many Loyalist refugees made the difficult overland trek into Canada after losing their place, property, and security during the Revolution. The Loyalists, many of whom helped found America from the early 1600s, left a well-armed population hostile to the King and his loyalist subjects to build the new nation of Canada. The motto of New Brunswick, created out of Nova Scotia for loyalist settlement, is "Hope Restored."
Loyalist refugees, later called United Empire Loyalists, began leaving at the end of the war whenever transport was available, at considerable loss of property and transfer of wealth. An estimated 70,000 left the thirteen newly independent states, representing about 3% of the total American population, of which 20-30% had supported the Crown during the American War for Independence[citation needed]. Approximately 62,000 were White and 8,000 Black; 46,000 went to Canada, 7,000 to Britain and 17,000 to the Caribbean. Beginning in the mid-1780s and lasting until the end of the century, some returned to the United States from the Caribbean and Nova Scotia.
Following the end of the Revolution and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Loyalist soldiers and civilians were evacuated from New York and resettled in other colonies of the British Empire, most notably in the future Canada. The two colonies of Nova Scotia (including modern-day New Brunswick), received about 34,000 Loyalist refugees; Prince Edward Island 2,000; and Quebec (including the Eastern Townships and modern-day Ontario) received some 10,000 refugees. Some unknown number, but in places a large percentage, of refugees were unable to establish themselves in British North America and eventually returned to the United States [1]. Many in Canada continued to maintain close ties with relatives in the United States, and as well conducted commerce across the border without much regard to British trade laws (ref. Rees, 2000).
The arrival of the Loyalists after the war of independence (1783) led to the division of Canada into the provinces of Upper Canada (what is now southern Ontario) and Lower Canada (what is now southern Quebec). Some disbanded regiments settled with their families along the St. Lawrence River upstream from Montreal and along the north shore of Lake Ontario. By their request, they settled in groups by ethnicity and religion.[2]
Loyalists soon petitioned the government to be allowed to use the British legal system they were used to in the American colonies. The creation of Upper and Lower Canada allowed most Loyalists to live under British laws and institutions, while the French-speaking population of Lower Canada could maintain their familiar French civil law and the Catholic religion.[3]
Realizing the importance of some type of recognition, on November 9, 1789, Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec and Governor General of British North America, declared "that it was his Wish to put the mark of Honour upon the Families who had adhered to the Unity of the Empire." [4] 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."
Some of the richest and most prominent Loyalists went to Britain to rebuild their lives, and many received pensions. Southern Loyalists, many taking along their slaves, went to the West Indies and the Bahamas, particularly to the Abaco Islands.
Thousands of Iroquois and other pro-British 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. Another smaller group of Iroquois settled on the shores of the Bay of Quinte in modern day South-eastern Ontario.
The government settled numerous Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia but they faced discrimination and inadequate support. The government was slow to survey their land (which meant they could not settle) and awarded them smaller grants in less convenient locations than those of white settlers. Further, they suffered discrimination by some of the whites.[5] When Great Britain set up the colony of Sierra Leone in Africa, many Black Loyalists emigrated there for what they perceived as the chance of self government.
Numerous Loyalists were forced to abandon substantial amounts of property in the United States. Restoration or compensation for this lost property was a major issue during the negotiation of the Jay Treaty in 1795. Negotiations rested on the concept of the United States negotiators 'advising' the US Congress to provide restitution. For the English this concept carried significant legal weight, far more than it did with the Americans; the U. S. Congress declined to accept the advice. More than two centuries later, some of the descendants of Loyalists still assert claims to their ancestors' property in the United States.
The British government transported to New Brunswick and settled about 400 of 3,000 former slaves from the United States whom they freed during and after the War of 1812. It had made similar promises to them as to slaves during the Revolution: to grant them freedom if they left slaveholders and fought with the British. Enslaved African Americans risked considerable danger to cross into British lines to achieve freedom. They moved to a new nation and frontier to make it happen.[6]
Modern-day descendants of those original refugees often use the term United Empire Loyalist, using "UE" as postnominal letters. The honourific is not part of the official Canadian honours system but was an attempt to recognize the sacrifices of the Loyalists.[7] Such everyday practice is rare, even in the original Loyalist strongholds like southeastern Ontario. However, historians and genealogists use it extensively as a kind of shorthand for identifying the ancestry of their or particular families.
In Canadian heraldry, Loyalist descendants are entitled to use a Loyalist coronet in their coat of arms. [2] [3]
The influence of the Loyalists on the evolution of Canada remains. Their ties with Britain and 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 "paper-strewn" path to independence. In effect, the new British North American provinces of Upper Canada (the forerunner of Ontario) and New Brunswick were created as places of refuge for the United Empire Loyalists. The mottoes of the two Provinces reflect this history - Ontario's motto is Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet (As he/she/it began loyal/faithful, such he/she/it remains), New Brunswick's motto is: Spem Reduxit (it restored hope).
The word "Loyalist" appears frequently in school, street, and business names in loyalist-settled communities such as Belleville, Ontario. The nearby city of Kingston was established as a loyalist stronghold, named in honour of King George III. There is also a township named Loyalist in the suburban outskirts of Kingston.
In 1996, the Canadian politicians John Godfrey and Peter Milliken sponsored the Godfrey-Milliken Bill, which would have entitled Loyalist descendants to reclaim ancestral property in the United States that was confiscated by the American government during the American Revolution. The bill, which did not pass in the House of Commons, was primarily intended as a satirical response to the contemporaneous American Helms-Burton Act. Milliken is a descendant of American Loyalists.
18th-century names are listed first, alongside their present-day equivalents.
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