Bibliographical Note, Passing of New France

Montcalm is, of course, a very prominent character in every history of New France. Parkman ('Montcalm and Wolfe') tried to be just, but the facts were not all before him when he wrote. The Abbe Casgrain ('Guerre du Canada, 1756-1760: Montcalm et Levis') was unfortunately too prejudiced in favor of Vaudreuil and Levis to be just, much less generous, towards Montcalm; but the Honorable Thomas Chapais's work ('Le Marquis de Montcalm, 1712-1759') based on much more nearly complete materials, does honor both to Montcalm and to French-Canadian scholarship. Captain Sautai's monograph on Ticonderoga ('Montcalm au Combat de Carillon') is the best military study yet published. An elaborate bibliography of works connected with Montcalm's Quebec campaign is to be found in volume vi of Doughty's 'Siege of Quebec'. The present work seems to be the only life of Montcalm written by an English-speaking author with access to all the original data, naval as well as military.

See also in this Series: 'The Winning of Canada'; 'The Great Fortress'; 'The Acadian Exiles'.

Bibliographical Note, The Winning of Canada

Wolfe is one of the great heroes in countless books of modern British history, by far the greatest hero in the many books about the fight for Canada, and the single hero of four biographies. It was more than a century after his triumphant death before the first of these appeared: The Life of Major-General James Wolfe by Robert Wright. A second Life of Wolfe appeared a generation later, this time in the form of a small volume by A. G. Bradley in the 'English Men of Action' series. The third and fourth biographies were both published in 1909, the year which marked the third jubilee of the Battle of the Plains. One of them, Edward Salmon's General Wolfe, devotes more than the usual perfunctory attention to the important influence of sea-power; but it is a sketch rather than a complete biography, and it is by no means free from error. The other is The Life and Letters of James Wolfe by Beckles Willson.

The histories written with the best knowledge of Wolfe's career in Canada are: the contemporary _Journal of the Campaigns In North America_ by Captain John Knox, Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, and The Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham by A. G. Doughty and G. W. Parmelee. Knox's two very scarce quarto volumes have been edited by A. G. Doughty for the Champlain Society for republication in 1914. Parkman's work is always excellent. But he wrote before seeing some of the evidence so admirably revealed in Dr Doughty's six volumes, and, like the rest, he failed to understand the real value of the fleet.

Bibliographical Note, A Chronicle of Carleton

The Seigneurs and the Loyalists, both closely associated with Carleton's Canadian career, are treated in two volumes of the present Series: The Seigneurs of Old Canada and The United Empire Loyalists. Two other volumes also provide profitable reading: The War Chief of the Six Nations: A Chronicle of Brant, the Indian leader who was to Carleton's day what Tecumseh was to Brock's, and The War Chief of the Ottawas: A Chronicle of the Pontiac War.

Only one life of Carleton has been written, Lord Dorchester, by A. G. Bradley (1907). The student should also consult John Graves Simcoe, by Duncan Campbell Scott (1905), Sir Frederick Haldimand, by Jean McIlwraith (1904), and A History of Canada from 1763 to 1812 by Sir Charles Lucas. Carleton is the leading character in the first half of the third volume of Canada and its Provinces, which, being the work of different authors, throws light on his character from several different British points of view as well as from several different kinds of evidence. Kingsford's History of Canada, volumes iv to vii, treats the period in considerable detail. Justin Smith's two volumes, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony, is the work of a most painstaking American scholar who had already produced an excellent account of Arnold's March from Cambridge to Quebec, in which, for the first time, Arnold's Journal was printed word for word. Arnold's Expedition to Quebec, by J. Codman, is another careful work. These are the complements of the British books mentioned above, as they emphasize the American point of view and draw more from American than from British sources of original information. The unfortunate defect of Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony is that the author's efforts to be sprightly at all costs tend to repel the serious student, while his very thoroughness itself repels the merely casual reader.

So many absurd or perverting mistakes are still made about the life and times of Carleton, and a full understanding of his career is of such vital importance to Canadian history, that no accounts given in the general run of books--including many so-called 'standard works'--should be accepted without reference to the original authorities. Justin Smith's books, cited above, have useful lists of authorities; though there is no discrimination between documents of very different value. The original British diaries kept during Montgomery and Arnold's beleaguerment have been published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in two volumes, at the end of which there is a very useful bibliography showing the whereabouts of the actual manuscripts of these and many other documents in English, French, and German. In addition to the American and British diarists who wrote in English there were several prominent French Canadians and German officers who kept most interesting journals which are still extant. The Dominion Archives at Ottawa possess an immense mass of originals, facsimiles, and verbatim copies of every kind, including maps and illustrations. The Dominion Archivist, Dr Doughty, has himself edited, in collaboration with Professor Shortt, all the Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada from 1759 to 1791.

The present Chronicle is based on the original evidence of both sides.

Bibliographical Note, The United Empire Loyalists

It is astonishing how little documentary evidence the Loyalists left behind them with regard to their migration. Among those who fled to England there were a few who kept diaries and journals, or wrote memoirs, which have found their way into print; and some contemporary records have been published with regard to the settlements of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. But of the Loyalists who settled in Upper and Lower Canada there is hardly one who left behind him a written account of his experiences. The reason for this is that many of them were illiterate, and those who were literate were so occupied with carving a home for themselves out of the wilderness that they had neither time nor inclination for literary labors. Were it not for the state papers preserved in England, and for a collection of papers made by Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Swiss soldier of fortune who was governor of Quebec at the time of the migration, and who had a passion for filing documents away, our knowledge of the settlements in the Canadas would be of the most sketchy character.

It would serve no good purpose to attempt here an exhaustive account of the printed sources relating to the United Empire Loyalists. All that can be done is to indicate some of the more important. The only general history of the Loyalists is Egerton Ryerson, The Loyalists of America and Their Times (2 vols., 1880); it is diffuse and antiquated, and is written in a spirit of undiscriminating admiration of the Loyalists, but it contains much good material. Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (2 vols., 1864), is an old book, but it is a storehouse of information about individual Loyalists, and it contains a suggestive introductory essay. Some admirable work on the Loyalists has been done by recent American historians. Claude H. Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (1902), is a readable and scholarly study, based on extensive researches into documentary and newspaper sources. The Loyalist point of view will be found admirably set forth in M. C. Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution (2 vols., 1897), and The Party of the Loyalists in the American Revolution (American Historical Review, I, 24). Of special studies in a limited field the most valuable and important is A. C. Flick, Loyalism in New York (1901); it is the result of exhaustive researches, and contains an excellent bibliography of printed and manuscript sources. Other studies in a limited field are James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution (1910), and G. A. Gilbert, The Connecticut Loyalists (American Historical Review, IV, 273).

For the settlements of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the most important source is The Winslow Papers (edited by W. O. Raymond, 1901), an admirably annotated collection of private letters written by and to Colonel Edward Winslow. Some of the official correspondence relating to the migration is calendared in the Historical Manuscript Commission's Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1909), Much material will be found in the provincial histories of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, such as Beamish Murdoch, A History of Nova Scotia or Acadie (3 vols., 1867), and James Hannay, History of New Brunswick (2 vols., 1909), and also in the local and county histories. The story of the Loyalists of Prince Edward Island is contained in W. H. Siebert and Florence E. Gilliam, The Loyalists in Prince Edward Island (Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd series, IV, ii, 109). An account of the Shelburne colony will be found in T. Watson Smith, The Loyalists at Shelburne(Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, VI, 53).

For the settlements in Upper and Lower Canada, the most important source is the Haldimand Papers, which are fully calendared in the Reports of the Canadian Archives from 1884 to 1889. J. McIlwraith, Sir Frederick Haldimand (1904), contains a chapter on 'The Loyalists' which is based upon these papers. The most important secondary source is William Canniff, History of the Settlement of Upper Canada (1869), a book the value of which is seriously diminished by lack of reference to authorities, and by a slipshod style, but which contains a vast amount of material preserved nowhere else. Among local histories reference may be made to C. M. Day, Pioneers of the Eastern Townships (1863), James Croil, Dundas (1861), and J. F. Pringle, Lunenburgh or the Old Eastern District (1891). An interesting essay in local history is L. H. Tasker, The United Empire Loyalist Settlement at Long Point, Lake Erie (Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, II). For the later immigration reference should be made to D. C. Scott, John Graves Simcoe (1905), and Ernest Cruikshank, Immigration from the United States into Upper Canada, 1784-1812 (Proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Convention of the Ontario Educational Association, 263).

An authoritative account of the proceedings of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the losses of the Loyalists is to be found in J. E. Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry into the Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists (1815).

For the social history of the Loyalist settlements a useful book is A 'Canuck' (M. G. Scherk), Pen Pictures of Early Pioneer Life in Upper Canada (1905). Many interesting notes on social history will be found also in accounts of travels such as the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada (1799), The Diary of Mrs John Graves Simcoe (edited by J. Ross Robertson, 1911), and Canadian Letters: Description of a Tour thro' the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada in the Course of the Years 1792 and '93 (The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, IX, 3 and 4).

An excellent index to unprinted materials relating to the Loyalists is Wilfred Campbell, Report on Manuscript Lists Relating to the United Empire Loyalists, with Reference to Other Sources (1909).

See also in this Series: The Father of British Canada; The War Chief of the Six Nations.

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Chronicles of Canada, The Passing of New France, A Chronicle of Montcalm, 1915

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