Description

The year was 1861. The guns had
been fired at Fort Sumter and
the United States found itself involved
in its second bloody civil war.
In British North America — that par t
of Great Britain's American empire
that had remained loyal to the Crown
during the first civil war* almost a
century earlier — the Upper Canadian
clergyman and educator Egerton
Ryerson circulated to "the Descendants
of the British Uni ted
Empire Loyalists of America" a call
for documents to serve as the basis for
a history of those who "preferred
British connexion and government to
any other." Ryerson's circular observed
that "the unsuccessful part ies
in such contests always appear to
disadvantage, and especially when
the only histories of them are wri t ten
by their adversaries." He added,
"They were a noble race of men — in
few respects inferior, and in several
respects superior, to the lauded Pilgrim
Fathers of New England." The
Loyalists, he insisted, deserved a
"faithful history and rightful vindication."