The grand event of this year for Halifax was the fitting out of the
expedition for the invasion of the State of Maine. This expedition
consisted of the 29th, 60th, 62nd and 98th British Regiments, with
artillery and some militia. The two brigades were commanded by Major
Goslin and Colonel Douglas; the whole being under the command of
Lieutenant-General Sir John Cope Sherbrooke. Rear Admiral Griffiths
commanded the squadron, which was composed of 3 seventy-four gun ships,
the Bulwark, Dragon and the Spencer, with two brigs, a schooner and ten
transports. Castine was taken on 1st September, and the town of Michias
by Lieut.-Col. Pilkington, on the 11th. Thus all the State or District
of Maine fell into the hands of the British as far west as the old
bounds of Acadia. This territory was originally part of Nova Scotia, and
at the peace of 1783 had been conceded to the Americans through the
ignorance and imbecility of Lord Gambier, who had been intrusted by the
British Ministry with the settlement of our lines. The British
Government was erroneously induced to relinquish this conquest at the
close of the war, a policy which has deprived this Dominion of the
fairest timber lands of New Brunswick, and caused the loss of the most
direct line of communication between the Canadian provinces through
British territory, a loss which the whole expense incurred by the
British Government during the war could not now repay. Sir John, having
left a garrison to take care of his conquest, soon returned with his
little army to Halifax. Several Halifax merchants availed themselves of
the opening afforded to make money, sent agents with supplies of goods
to establish shops at Castine, etc. The British authorities collected
the Revenue of Maine while in occupation, which amounted to a
considerable sum of money. This fund was placed by the colonial minister
in the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, who appropriated
it in various ways as he thought most for the benefit of the country. It
was from this fund that Dalhousie College was afterwards built and
endowed by the Earl of Dalhousie, who succeeded Sir John Cope Sherbrooke
in the government, the Legislature of the Province having been induced
to vote the sum of £5,000 currency towards the same object.
In the autumn the small pox made its appearance in Dartmouth and Preston
and was very fatal among the Chesapeake negroes.
The old Rockingham Club, which in the days of Prince Edward and Sir John
Wentworth dined periodically at the Rockingham Hotel on the Basin, had
ceased to exist, but it appears to have revived about this time under
the name of the Wellington Club. A dinner at the Rockingham by the
Wellington Club was announced in the papers of 26th August to take place
on the 30th instant at half past four o'clock. Five o'clock was the
fashionable dinner hour. The Governor's dinner cards of this date were
all for that hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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