Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

freedoms and permitted the return of Jesuits to the Province to satisfy Canadiens. Both actions, in differing ways, would contribute to the American Revolutionary War. 1775-83. The American Revolutionary War. From south of the Great Lakes came the American Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. 1783. Treaty of Paris (second). After gaining independence, the United States took possession of most of the territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes. Approximately 70,000 Loyalists (15% of the Loyalists in the liberated US colonies) emigrated to British territories north of the border. Many loyalists moved to St John Nova Scotia where, finding themselves in 1784 at odds with republican attitudes prevailing in Halifax Nova Scotia, they brought about the division of the colony of Nova Scotia into the colonies of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island and New Brunswick. St John briefly became the capital of New Brunswick, until for strategic reasons, the capital was moved up-river to Fredericton. A further group of British Loyalists from mid- USA moved to lands north of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and promoted the British passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791. 1783-1812 . BNA Immigration. The most important source of immigrants to British North America during this period was the United States. Movement across the border was easy and the host community was, outside of (French) Lower Canada, overwhelmingly and increasingly North American in its accents and values. That ended with the War of 1812. After 1815, as the great transatlantic migration from Europe commenced, British North America became much more British than it had ever been before (Belshaw, 2020, 10.3). 1785-95. The Northwest Indian War. Britain supported the Native Indian tribes bordering the Great Lakes against the US military and migrants (see Chapter 1B). 1791. Constitutional Act of 1791. The Province of Quebec was divided into Upper Canada west of the Ottawa River, culturally British with British laws and administration, and Lower Canada east of the Ottawa River, similarly respectful of French culture and laws. 1794. Jay Treaty. Ratified by the US Senate in June 1795. Britain gave up rights to the (old) American Northwest Territory, west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River (see Fig. 15), establishing a border through the Great Lakes and moving the capital of Upper Canada from Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York (Toronto). 1803-15. Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon blocked Baltic timber supplies essential for British ship construction, and as a result Britain provided the economic incentive that brought BNA into a golden age of timber trade and shipbuilding in the first half of the 19 th century. Rich merchants, mostly of English and Scottish origin, employed thousands of French Canadians and Irish laborers to build ships, square wood, and load and unload cargo (ref., ‘Ville de Quebec’). 1805. Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1805, Britain removed Labrador from (French) Lower Canada and annexed it to Newfoundland (which had prior claim to the territory) as the colony of Newfoundland and Labrador, which then became an official colony in 1809 and the Crown Colony of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1825. 1812-14. War of 1812. The War of 1812, summarized in chapter 1B, resulted in the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, which was signed in February 1815 reaffirming the border between the US and Canada through the Great Lakes. Naval victories, crucial to an acceptable US conclusion of the war, resulted from the dominance achieved by Commodore Oliver Perry against British naval forces on Lake Erie and Commandant Thomas Macdonough (family from Dublin) on Lake Champlain, diminishing the threat of British invasion of the US, while exposing Upper Canada vulnerability to potential attack.