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It was during Governor Haldimand's administration that one of the most important events in the history of Canada occurred as a result of the American war for independence. This event was the coming to the provinces of many thousand people, known as United Empire Loyalists, who, during the progress of the war, but chiefly at its close, left their old homes in the thirteen colonies.
One of these named Philip White, notorious for his depredations, had been caught by the New Jersey people, and killed while attempting to escape, when being conducted to Monmouth jail. His partisans in New York vowed revenge. Captain Huddy, a warm whig, then in confinement in New York, was taken by a party of loyalists under Captain Lippincott, to the Jersey shore, near Sandy Hook, and hanged.
The Anglo-Irish, who formed the majority of the Supreme Council, connected by blood and language with England, had entered into the war, purely as one of religious liberty. Nationally, they had, apart from the civil disabilities imposed on religious grounds, no antipathy, no interest, hostile to the general body of English loyalists, represented in Ireland by the King's lieutenant, Ormond.
"The lad has his father's impulse," he said to Captain Daniel. "But I thought old Mr. Carvel to be one of the warmest loyalists in the colonies." I bit my lip; for, since that unhappy deception of Mr. Carvel, I had not meant to be drawn into an avowal of my sentiments. But I had, alas, inherited a hasty tongue. "Mr. Washington," said the captain, "old Mr. Carvel has ever been a good friend to me.
While he stood looking at the crowd, Nabbes, a reporter for one of the New-York papers, who was lounging in the pulpit, began to laugh at him. "I say, Captain, you Virginia Loyalists don't go into this war with vim. It's a bitter job to you." Palmer's face reddened. "What you say is true, thank God," quietly. Nabbes stuck his hands into his pockets, whistling.
He concluded by moving a resolution, which was unanimously carried by the Council, urging "all Loyalists who owe allegiance to our cause" to join the Army at once if qualified for military service. From beginning to end of this splendidly patriotic oration no allusion was made to the Nationalist attitude to the war.
But and this is where the emphasis lay in the matter of luxury for his only son, Peter, Pupkin senior was a Maritime Province man right to the core, with all the hardihood of the United Empire Loyalists ingrained in him. No luxury for that boy! No, sir!
But once this end was achieved we should have reverted to the normal attitude and written up as the true Irish Loyalists, Brian the Great, and Shane the Proud, the valiant Owen Roe and the peerless Tone, Mitchel and Davis irreconcilables all. When men revolt against an established evil it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. We do not extol a rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake.
The first great harrying of the Loyalists drove more than thirty thousand from their homes; and about twenty-five thousand of these embarked at New York. Then there were the remnants of twenty Loyalist corps to pension, settle, or employ. There were also the British prisoners to receive, besides ten thousand German mercenaries.
John's and St. Stephen's parishes, had shown too active a zeal in the cause of liberty, to escape punishment, and it was resolved that their country should be laid waste. The loyalists of Charleston, and that vicinity, had been embodied in a regiment, and, under Col. Ball, prepared to carry this design into execution.
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