84 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



military incapacity never before or since exhibited in their history, m 

 incapacity, however, quite ]n harmony with the quality of the states- 

 manship which brought on this needless war. The Americans, wonder- 

 ful to say, won, and by the magic of their success transmuted the crime 

 of rebellion into the honourable institution of independence. During 

 the progress of the war large numbers of the Loyalists ceased to use 

 argument alone against their fellow-countrymen, and took up arms on 

 behalf of England. Thereby they incurred from the struggling Ameri- 

 cans a hatred more intense than that against England herself. Thus 

 it came about that on the declaration of peace^ the Loyalists, soldiers 

 and civilians alike, who had been collected inito the British garrisoned 

 towns, could not, because of the persecution of their erstwhile neigh- 

 bours, return to their former homes, but were forced into exile. Natur- 

 lally they turned for refuge and new homes to the nearest of the 

 remaining^ possessions of England, and in 1783 they went by thousands 

 to the British West Indies and into British America, especially into 

 Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick), to which they came to the 

 number of some twenty-eight thousand. To these countries they were 

 a most welconre accession; and, coming with all the value of their 

 native worth, with the prestige of their loyalty, and with the gi-atitude 

 of the mother country, they naturally were accorded the best in laoids 

 and other emoluments that those countries afforded. 



When the Kevolution closed, the Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia 

 were collected almost entirely in two centres, New York City, and 

 Castine, Maine, and from these places they removed in the summer and 

 autumn of 1783 (and possibly from Castine in the spring of 1784), 

 those from New York mostly settling on the St. John, and those from 

 Castine at Passamaquoddy. They included both the Loyalist regiments 

 and large numbers of civilians, all of course with their families, and 

 the civilians were in some cases organized into associations containing 

 those from a given state or other locality. In Nova Scotia (including 

 then the present New Brunswick) the best available lands were laid out 

 for them in large blocks, and on their arrivai, the regiments, now dis- 

 banded, or the associations were assigned each to a ])articular hlock,- 

 while other blocks were assigned to mingled soldiers and civilians from 

 various sources. The city of St. John and the town of Carleton were 

 laid out in small city lots and granted to Loyalists, mostly civilians, 

 and especially those not assigned to the special blocks. With the Loyal- 



^The movement to Halifax at the evacuation of Boston in 177G seems not 

 to have affected settlement in New Brunswick, though no douht individuals from 

 that source ultimately settled in New Brunswick. 



^ These blocks are located and named on the map No. 4(J in my "Historic 

 Sites." 



