United empire loyalists

With the declaration of Independence issued by the 13 southerly British colonies in 1776, the United States was born. Over 40,000 people who supported the British, named “Loyalists”, escaped the revolutionary war by fleeing north and settling in Quebec and Nova Scotia.

The Loyalists comprised many different nations, European, aboriginal and others, and all religions. Joseph Brant brought thousands of Loyalist Mohawk Indians to Canada. There were also approximately 3000 black loyalists, both slaves and free men, who escaped North; in 1792, some of them, having been given poor land in Nova Scotia, travelled to Africa where they established Freetown, Sierra Leone, a British colony, where freed slaves could live.