UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS: WHERE DOES IT COME FROM ? WHO WERE THEY ? The term United Empire Loyalist was an honorary title given by Lord Dorchester the governor general of British North America to colonists who remained loyal to and resettled in British North America during and after the american revolutionary war period. Since they were all coming from the thirteen colonies their groups were as diverse as the place they had just left.The united empire loyalists were made up of a variety of people with different cultures, customs and native languages. While the honorific "United Empire Loyalist" is not part of the official Canadian honours system, …show more content…
The American Revolution (1775–1783) had a significant impact on shaping Nova Scotia. At the beginning, there was ambivalence in Nova Scotia, "the 14th American Colony" as some called it, over whether the colony should join the Americans in the war against Britain and rebellion flared at the Battle of Fort Cumberland and the Siege of Saint John (1777). Throughout the war, American privateers devastated the maritime economy by capturing ships and looting almost every community outside of Halifax. These American raids alienated many sympathetic or neutral Nova Scotians into supporting the British. By the end of the war a number of Nova Scotian privateers were outfitted to attack American shipping.British troops from Nova Scotia helped evacuate approximately 30,000 United Empire Loyalists (American Tories), who settled in Nova Scotia, with land grants by the Crown as some compensation for their losses. Of these, 14,000 went to present-day New Brunswick and in response the mainland portion of the Nova Scotia colony was separated and became the province of New Brunswick with Sir Thomas Carleton the first governor on August 16, 1784.[28] Loyalist settlements also led Cape Breton Island to become a separate colony in 1784, only to be returned to Nova Scotia in 1820.The Loyalists exodus created new communities across Nova Scotia, including Shelburne, which was briefly one of the larger British settlements in North America, and infused the province …show more content…
500 to 1000 black loyalists who were held as slaves by patriots, escaped to British lines and joined the British army. about 62,000 Loyalists relocated to Canada, and others to Britain (7,000) or to Florida or the West Indies (9,000. Nearly all black loyalists left for Nova Scotia, Florida, or England, where they could remain free.[123]Since Sir Guy Carleton intended to honor the promise of freedom, the British proposed a compromise that would compensate slave owners, and provide certificates of freedom plus the right to be evacuated to one of the British colonies to any Black person who could prove his service or status. The British transported more than 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia, the greatest number of people of African descent to arrive there at any one time. One of their settlements, Birchtown, Nova Scotia was the largest free African community in North America for the first few years of its existence.Most died of disease but Britain took the survivors to Canada as free men. Black Loyalists found the northern climate and frontier conditions in Nova Scotia difficult, and were subject to discrimination by other Loyalist settlers, many of them slaveholders. In July 1784 Black Loyalists in Shelburne were targeted in the Shelburne Riots, the first recorded race riots in Canadian history. The Crown officials granted land to the Black Loyalists that was lesser quality, more rocky and hard to cultivate compared to that given to White