Chapter XIV: Appendix: No. 4

Guests from the 'Royal' stroll frequently to the grassy ramparts of old Fort George, whose irregular outlines are still to be traced in the open plains which now surround it. Here landed in 1783-84, ten thousand United Empire Loyalists who, to keep inviolate their oaths of allegiance to the King, quitted their freeholds and positions of trust and honour in the States to begin life anew in the unbroken wilds of Upper Canada.

"History has made us somewhat familiar with the settlement of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the expatriated Loyalists. Little has been written of the sufferings and privations endured by 'the makers' of Upper Canada.

"With the present revival of interest in American history, it is singular that writers do not awaken a curiosity about the Loyalists of the Revolution. Students and specialists who have investigated the story of a flight, equalled only by that of the Huguenots after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have been led to admire the spirit of unselfish patriotism which led over one hundred thousand fugitives to self-exile. While the Pilgrim Fathers came to America leisurely, bringing their household goods and their charters with them, the United Empire Loyalists, it has been well said, 'bleeding with the wounds of seven years of war, left ungathered the crops of their rich farms on the Mohawk and in New Jersey, and, stripped of every earthly possession, braved the terrors of the unbroken wilderness from the Mohawk to Lake Ontario.'"--_Jane Meade Welsh, in Harper's New Monthly for August_, 1887.

"1812--like the characters on the labarum of Constantine--is a sign of solemn import to the people of Canada. It carries with it the virtue of an incantation. Like the magic numerals of the Arabian sage, these words, in their utterance, quicken the pulse, and vibrate through the frame, summoning from the pregnant past memories of suffering and endurance and of honourable exertion. They are inscribed on the banner and stamped on the hearts of the Canadian people--a watchword rather than a war cry. With these words upon his lips, the loyal Canadian, as a vigilant sentinel, locks forth into the gloom, ready with his challenge, hopeful for a friendly response but prepared for any other. The people of Canada are proud of the men, and of the deeds, and of the recollections of those days. They feel that the War of 1812 is an episode in the story of a young people, glorious, in itself and full of promise. They believe that the infant which, in its very cradle, could strangle invasion, struggle and endure bravely and without repining, is capable of a nobler development, if God wills further trial."--_Coffin's Chronicles of the War, Chapter I., preamble_.

APPENDIX NO. 5.

[Mr. Le Moine, in "Quebec Past and Present," states that slavery was finally abolished in Canada in 1803.] "Near Fort George, less than a century ago, stood the first Parliament House of Upper Canada--a building rude in comparison with the massive pile, the Bishop's Palace, used for a similar purpose at Quebec--but memorable for one at least of the many liberal laws its homespun representatives enacted. Here, seventy years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the first United Empire Loyalist Parliament, like the embattled farmers at Concord, 'fired a shot heard round the world.' For one of the first measures of the exiled patricians was to pass an act forbidding slavery. Few readers know that at Newark--now Niagara, Ontario--was enacted that law by which Canada became, not only the first country in the world to abolish slavery, but as such, a safe refuge for the fugitive slaves from the Southern States."--_Jane Meade Welsh, in Harper's New Monthly, August_, 1887.