Neutrality and Religion in Revolutionary Nova Scotia

Abstract

years.' Situated in scattered communities in a remote and seagirt province, the thirteen or fourteen thousand persons of New England origin who had settled the vacant Acadian farmlands after 1759, were poor, discouraged, and unorganized. Even the traditional powers of the Town Meetings had been largely abrogated by an ever vigilant executive government at Halifax.2 It may, without impropriety, be said, wrote Colonel Robert Morse in 1784, in the whole Peninsula there is only one road, that leading from Halifax ... to Annapolis, a distance of about one hundred and thirty-five miles.'3 The remaining settlements were accessible only by boat or by trails blazed through the forests. Had the colonies to the south been able to raise an effective sea-force to gain control of the Bay of Fundy coasts they would undoubtedly have found many eager republicans among the Nova Scotians. Without such a force, attempts at invasion, such as that made by Captain Jonathan Eddy at Fort Cumberland in 1776, were bound to be abortive.4 The local inhabitants did not rise, because they were too well aware of their weakness, and of the powerful British ships and guns based at Halifax. They were also deeply conscious of the profits to be derived from neutrality.