Inevitably, tension increased between Blacks and whites, erupting in a riot in 1784 when the homes of twenty Black settlers were destroyed by retired soldiers. Black families were forced to leave Shelburne and move into the segregated community of Birchtown, where other Black families had already settled. The soil there was rocky and the land barren or heavily wooded. Many of the Blacks were from the South and unprepared for the harsh winters. They lived in crude huts or semi-subterranean hovels and some fell dead on the streets from starvation. Others, out of desperation, were forced to kill their dogs or cats for food.
Blacks were a very low priority for the Nova Scotia government and even when they were finally given official title to lands for living and agriculture, these lands were poor for farming – grim fields of boulders and glacial deposits of stones.
In contrast to Birchtown, Shelburne prospered as an economic centre with inns, schools and stores. Fancy New England-style houses were built and it began to look like a proper New England village. While it would have been wise for the people of Shelburne to build a sustainable cod fishery, the men instead opted to go into whaling, a more lucrative business at first, but like the town, an industry doomed to failure.
Shelburne was too isolated to sustain a healthy trade with the larger population in Halifax. Commerce was exclusively by sea and there were no decent roads. Hopes had flourished at one time that Shelburne would become l arger and wealthier than Halifax and even become a centre of government and culture. But Shelburne was headed for economic collapse. There were too many merchants and too few buyers. Bad weather, fires and smallpox alsoo crippled the town’s development.
By 1788, the town, with a population diminished to merely 300 people, was in a severe economic decline. People were moving away to Halifax or elsewhere for better opportunities. Already there were 360 empty houses and the schoolteacher, with only eighteen students, gave up and left for Halifax herself.
The decline of the Shelburne white community might have given some satisfaction to those Blacks who had been so poorly treated there but it was small comfort. Nova Scotia surely was not the promised land for most Black Loyalists. Many had sought their freedom by following the British Army and some had fought side by side with them against the Americans. (George Washington himself was an owner of slaves.) Three thousand of these Black Loyalists had come here with promises of freedom but found they were more often than not denied land and the supplies they needed to live. Instead of freedom and a plot of land, they became sharecroppers or indentured servants. Like other Loyalists, they started looking for a better place to live.
In May of 1790, the Sierra Leone Company was granted the rights to set up a government in territory in West Africa. They needed settlers and John Clarkson, the company’s recruitment officer, encouraged Black Nova Scotians to emigrate yet again.
Thomas Peters was one of those disgruntled Nova Scotian Blacks. He had been a slave in North Carolina and later a Loyalist soldier. In Nova Scotia, he felt cheated out of the freedom and land he was looking for. Peters persuaded many of those around him in Shelburne and Birchtown that a better life could be had away from Nova Scotia. In January of 1792, about 1,200 Blacks left Nova Scotia for Africa. In short order, almost a third of the Black population of Nova Scotia left to start a new life and a new country on the continent of their ancestors.
Still other Black Loyalists remained in Nova Scotia and more would arrive during the War of 1812. However, slavery continued in Nova Scotia. Loyalists with slaves tried to hold onto what they saw as their rights of ownership, while their disenfranchised “property” began to take their case for freedom to Nova Scotian courts. It wasn’t until the abolition of slavery within the British Empire in 1833 that the buying, selling and ownershipf of slaves was completely eradicated here. While Nova Scotians sometimes speak proudly of having granted freedom to American slaves, it was a freedom that came grudgingly from those owners and merchants in human misery.
Chapter 23
Chapter 23
A Prince for Nova Scotia
Halifax hit the bottom in its postwar slump around 1788 and after that things began to look up. Prince William, son of King George III, arrived from England with an entourage of fashionable folk and this gave Haligonians an enhanced self-image. William was rich, of course, but he was also used to living a life on the wild side, which allowed him to feel right at home in Halifax, where no one would criticize him for being noticeably drunk a good deal of the time.
If the French Revolution had any effect at all on Halifax, it was not in the realm of politics but of fashion. Well-to-do Nova Scotian women shed their hoop skirts, stays, laces and bustles for sexier garb involving low-cut bodices and a reduced arsenal of underclothing. Upper-class men had taken to tight breeches, layered waistcoats, oversized collars, tails, short hair and oversized hats.
The lower classes still wore the same old stuff. Women were attired in bulky, cumbersome dresses and covered their heads with mob caps, while the men of the house wore rustic breeches, puffy shirts of coarse cloth and three-cornered hats.
Governor Parr died and, in 1792, John Wentworth filled his shoes. Thomas Raddall suggests that Wentworth got his job in return for a favour. Mrs. Frances Wentworth had been sleeping with naughty Prince William and her husband, John, had been good enough to look the other way. It was a scandal that rocked the sensibilities of some respectable people in Halifax but life went on as usual.
Governor Wentworth landed his job just as tensions were mounting again with the French, which meant that Halifax would return to full military alert as a naval base. The fleet returned and press gangs went back to the streets and taverns to “enlist” the men needed to fulfil the bloody demands of war. The military man at the top was General Ogilvie, who would take more than his fair share of glory for his expedition against the tiny colony of St. Pierre and Miquelon off the Newfoundland coast. There the French governor, Danseville, surrendered without putting up a fight and he, his staff and a couple of hundred fishermen were hauled off to Hnalifax as prisoners. Ogilvie fancied the bell from the church in St. Pierre and that too was hauled to Halifax for St. Peter’s Church. The French prisoners were scattered around Nova Scotia, while Governor Danseville was eventually paroled to live in a fancy estate outside of Dartmouth, thanks to a generous allowance from the British government. Danseville must have been well-liked by the enemy. Many of the St. Pierre fishermen stayed on in Nova Scotia as well, some assimilated into Acadian communities.
Another Prince with a Grand Plan
In the spring of 1794, another prince, Edward, had found his way to Halifax after a number of family squabbles with his father, King George III. Halifax was looking like a pretty good place to fob off troublesome members of the royal family. Edward was unlike his brother William in many ways. He wasn’t quite as lecherous or raucous and he consumed less alcohol. But he liked to play military games and push people around. Both pompous and vicious at times, he abused the authority accorded by his royal rank. King George had bestowed upon his troublesome son the title of Commander-in-Chief of Nova Scotia.
Edward was certain the French would one day assault Halifax and try to take it over, so he wanted to see the town fortified. Suddenly there was scads of money to be spent on Halifax. Edward had a French “mistress,” which of course seems somewhat odd, given his paranoia about French invasions and the fact he was the military leader intending to do battle with the French. Alphonse Thérèse Bernardine Julie de Montgenet de Saint Laurent (Madame St. Laurent, for short) lived with Edward as a kind of common-law wife, and if anyone pondered the indelicacy of this, no comment was made to Edward.
Fortunately for Halifax, Edward wanted to see the town develop into a much grander place. He oversaw the building of roads, public buildings, the great fort of the Citadel and all manner of military structures. He had a fancy for mechanical toys, which led to the building of the clock tower on Citadel Hill, completed in 1803, three years after his departure. For his own com
fort, he built a big house facing the Commons for Madame St. Laurent and himself. He also called for the reconstruction of the dingy barracks a stone’s throw from his new estate.
If you were to visit the Citadel today, you might wonder how the fort fits so snugly on the top of this great drumlin deposited eons ago by the glaciers. Well, Edward had his workers excavate the top of the hill by some fifteen feet. As you might imagine, it was no mean feat to simply give a brush cut to the top of a small mountain. After this extraordinary labour, the new fort was built with massively reinforced bunkers against the worst possible attacks.
The Maroons from Jamaica
One of the factors that made the Citadel construction possible was the arrival of a group known as the “Maroons,” a corruption of the Spanish word cimaroon, which means wild or untamed. The Maroons (also known as the Trelawny Maroons) were from Jamaica and had been slaves for the Spanish up to the time the British took over in 1655. Upon the departure of the Spanish, the Maroons were given weapons to continue harassing the British even after the exodus of their former masters. This was probably more a move of revenge toward the English rather than goodwill toward the Maroons.
Armed and dangerous, the feisty Maroon population proved to be excellent guerrilla warriors and the British failed to force them back into the cruel harness of slavery. A peace treaty signed in 1739 would allow the Brit ish and Maroons to co-exist on the island, but the Maroons, in the bargain, agreed to help capture runaway slaves of the British and also to fight alongside the British if the island was ever invaded. In return, the Maroons were “given” land to live on as well as “Freedom and Liberty.”
The Maroons were short-changed on the land deal. There was not enough of it to grow sufficient food. They had many complaints against the plantation owners and the grievances were not settled by the British, so the Maroons took up arms again in 1795-96, only to be tracked down by British dogs and persecuted even further. The British, eager to preserve their slave economy here, feared that co-existing free Blacks among slaves was dangerous, so they came up with a plan to get rid of the Maroons.
Over the years, Halifax had gained a reputation as a place to send people who were unwanted by the authorities so it seemed like a good destination for the Maroons. Through various persuasive techniques, the British actually succeeded in sending the Maroons off to Nova Scotia with the promise they could live here as free people. Late in July of 1796, the Dover, the Mary and the Ann arrived with 568 Maroons and a British commissioner – a general named Quarrell – and his assistant, Ochterloney.
Halifax authorities weren’t prepared for this. They made Quarrell keep his ships four miles off shore and refused them permission to dock lest the uncivilized Maroons create havoc in their supposedly well-cmannered little city. Quarrell wrote a letter to the government convincing them that the Maroons had displayed excellent manners while aboard ship and that they were willing to help build Prince Edward’s Citadel if they could come ashore.
A deal was struck and even the Maroons felt somewhat flattered by being able to help build a fortress for a prince, although clearly they had been manipulated back into a position not far removed from slavery. They moved into barracks and tents and were paid regular soldiers’ wages. By September they were asked to move to Preston, where Governor Wentworth found them to be a convenient labour pool for his summer home there. The Maroons were promised clothing, shelter, food and even a judiciary system for resolving grievances and punishing crimes. Their first winter in Preston, however, was said to be one of the worst in Nova Scotia’s history. There were shortages of everything and the Maroons were not happy with their new home. They viewed themselves as an independent nation with the right to dictate their own future. One thing became clear to these people who had grown up in a tropical climate: they wanted to move to some place warmer, like India or the Cape of Good Hope.
Wentworth wasn’t prepared to let them sail off as free people. The Maroons had proven to be good workers and extremely useful to the advancement of Nova Scotia. He thought if they could somehow be assimilated into Nova hScotia society, they would be happier. (It was probably the best thing he could think of; he couldn’t alter the climate.) Halifax “society,” however, was frightened by the Maroons who worshipped a god named Accompang. They were polygamous and buried their dead at ground level with rocks piled on the bodies and provisions left for their journey into the afterlife. Given the barbarity of the British military practices and the lasciviousness of their nobility, it’s ironic that the Maroons would be taken to task for their beliefs or their lifestyle.
The governor thought a little stiff Christian religion coupled with English schooling could fix things up, so he sent an Anglican minister and a teacher to Preston. The Maroons saw no real harm in letting their kids be sent to school and even allowed them to be baptised, but adults would have none of this for themselves. The hypocritical Governor Wentworth, himself having fathered several children by Maroon women, was insisting that polygamy cease and that all Maroons become Christians.
They continued on as workers – cheap labour – constructing roads and buildings in Halifax, but they refused to cultivate the land they were given because they seriously believed they would still be leaving for a home in a warmer climate. All the while, their upkeep was being paid partly by Nova Scotia but primarily by the Jamaican government, which was footing the bill to keep them far away so their own slaves would not be inspired to demand a similar freedom.
One conniving Nova Scotia landowner offered to buy the Maroons from the government as his own labour force for £10 each per year. The Maroons were a proud, resolute people who never lost their love of freedom. They insisted they were nobody’s slaves and could not be bought. Grievances were sent all the way to London. In 1800 the majority of them followed in the footsteps of the Black Loyalists and sailed on to Sierra Leone, although a number of their descendants remain in Nova Scotia to this day.
A Mediterranean Touch
Along with the Citadel, Prince Edward had other grandiose plans for military development in Halifax. He built a fort in the shape of a star on George’s Island and laid a chained boom across the Northwest Arm on the westberly side of Halifax. It was anchored with a ring bolt in Point Pleasant Park, at a location still known as Chain Rock.
Edward liked the look of the round towers made of stone that he had seen in Corsica and thought Halifax needed such a Mediterranean touch. So began the building of Martello towers at Point Pleasant, the eastern Battery and York Redoubt. He also established the first European long-distance telegraph system in North America s– a massive undertaking which involved relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop by way of a system of flags, wicker balls and drums (or lanterns at night). In its heyday, this system could convey messages from Halifax to Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal.
With Prince Edward investing so heavily in Halifax building, others followed suit and the city underwent a boom time. Edward and Madame St. Laurent had moved into the summer house owned by the Wentworths along B edford Basin, displacing that married couple to the aforementioned abode in Preston, which was soon to be a centre of the growing Black population in Nova Scotia.
With French prisoners of war being hauled into Halifax, it quickly became obvious there was no place to put them and the government didn’t want to have to pay for their keep anyway. Some were set free and allowed to work for their own welfare. More Blacks were also arriving, this time as prisoners of war – soldiers from the colonial regiments of the Caribbean. The incarcerated POWs found themselves either on Melville Island in the Northwest Arm, in Dartmouth or simply on ships used as floating prisons in Bedford Basin and down around the Dockyard. Needless to say, the conditions were not comfortable and the English weren’t really prepared to handle the thousands of prisoners who poured into Halifax.
During this time, privateers once again had a chance to do their good deeds for the Crown and rake in profits as they plundered their victims on the high seas. In fact
, privateers and nobility alike were bringing considerable new wealth into Halifax. Wentworth picked up on the spending spree, convincing the Assembly to build a new Government House that is still in use today. Nonetheless, for the have-nots, Halifax was still a pretty desperate place. While the numbers of socialites, merchants and prosperous government appointees had swelled, so too had the population of the poor, few of whom had a chance to share in the relative prosperity of the times before Edward was recalled to England in 1800.
Wealth on the Waterfront
Privateers continued to ply their trade right up to the end of the century and beyond. In Halifax, the latest booty would be “legitimately” split between the owners and crew as well as the co-operating judges and lawyers who would get an appointed chunk of the prize money. Some of the men who sailed and pillaged the ships at sea became wealthy. Still others died in battle or from Caribbean diseases or ended up languishing in foreign prisons. One of the more notable ships in this business was the Charles Mary Wentworth, respectfully named after the son of the governor. The ship was built by Simeon Perkins in Liverpool and sailed by Captain Joseph Freeman with sixty-seven men and four boys. In 1798 the Wentworth took over a ship which was loaded with cotton and cocoa and flying the Spanish flag. When it sailed into Halifax, it fetched a hefty sum of £9,000.
The Wentworth was a real money-maker for all involved and the stories about her were good enough to lure many a landlubber into signing up for a privateer on the high seas. One of those privateersmen, Enos Collins, made a considerable amount of money in the business and invested it wisely as a merchant on the Halifax waterfront. He died one of the wealthiest men in North America. Some of his stores and warehouse buildings of stone still stand today along a part of Halifax Harbour rightfully developed as “Privateers’ Wharf.”
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