History of the settlement of Upper Canada (Ontario,): with special reference to the Bay QuintéCanniff, William
History
History of the settlement of Upper Canada (Ontario,): with special reference to the Bay Quinté
Canniff, William
Ontario -- History; Quinte, Bay of (Ont.)
While the statesman and politician may, with advantage, study the lesson
then read, and which has been but lately annotated by the United States
civil war, by the determined subjection of eight millions of
Southerners, who desired freedom to establish a new government, let it
be our humble occupation to record some of the immediate individual
results of that great tempest, of which American writers, with but few
exceptions, have never spoken fairly. Writers among them are not wanting
to give lively pen pictures of their revolutionary heroes; not only
forgetting the sufferings of the loyalists—the devoted ones, who gave up
all—property, homes, friends, all the associations of a birth-place,
rather than bow the knee to Baal; but who have wilfully misrepresented
them; have charged them with crimes, at once atrocious and unfounded.
The sufferings, the losses, the hardships, incident to pioneer life,
with the noble purposes and undeviating loyalty of the British American
tories, have never been fully related—never engaged the pen of the
faithful historian. American writers, on the contrary, have recorded in
glowing colors the deeds and actions of the “fathers of the Republic.”
To this no objection; can be made; but may we not charge those
historians with uncharitableness, with unnecessary neglect of the claims
of the loyalists to pure motives, with ignoring their brave deeds, their
devoted sufferings, and with unduly ascribing to the “king’s men”
motives base and cruel. But the sufferings of the U. E. Loyalists are
unrecorded. The world has rarely been told that they were persecuted,
their homes pillaged, their persons maltreated, their valuables seized,
their houses made desolate, their real estate taken from them, without
legal proceedings. The world has been so flooded with the writings of
Americans, describing their own excellencies and eulogizing their own
cause, that no space has been found to do simple justice to the noble
ones who preferred British rule to the uncertain and untried. Indeed, so
strongly and for so long a time has the current been flowing to swell
the ocean of American glory, that hardly a voice or pen is found doing
service for the unfortunate loyalists, who chose to endure a little
rather than rush into the vortex of rebellious strife. Even Englishmen
have so long listened to one-sided statements, that no one of them can
be found to say a word for the old tory party of America. Hence it is
that the U. E. Loyalists are very imperfectly known; their history
unwritten, their tales of sorrow unattended to, their noble doings
unsung. Had there been a hand to guide a describing pen,—to picture the
doings, the sufferings, the self-denying heroism of the loyal party; to
recount the motives underlying all they did; and had there been ears as
willing to listen, and eyes to read, and hearts to receive the facts as
those of a contrary nature have obtained, then a far different
impression would have been made, and fixed upon the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account