Suffering Wretched

By 1789, all of North America was in the grip of a serious famine. The winters had been long and cold for the past several years, and the settlers' dreams of establishing farms were dashed by poor land and a desperate scarcity of farming's necessities. Land grants had taken far too long to arrive, and when they did, most had wasted their savings simply keeping themselves alive.

Famine struck everybody, white and black alike. Ships from Montreal arrived in Halifax and were desperately seeking rations to relieve them. Since Halifax was no better off, they were sent away. Nova Scotia's population was tripled in a few short years by Loyalist refugees. When the British stopped supporting them, the entire province plunged into poverty. Nova Scotia had truly earned it's nickname of Nova Scarcity.

However, most of the whites had a better option available to them. They could return to the United States, where tensions had cooled considerably and most of them had family. Most of them did exactly that. Shelburne was hardly the New York of the North, which was what they had hoped for. Even wealthy merchants had largely been reduced to poverty. Farming was nearly an impossibility. Merchants had nobody worth trading with due to restrictions on trade with the US and various mercantile laws. Even the whaling industry had collapsed. Only fishing offered a opportunity to earn a decent living.

Former slaves had no such options. For them the choice was a brutal one: misery or death. The people who had employed them, albeit under exploitative conditions, departed for the United States. A bad situation got much worse. Without farmland or anybody to employ them, most of the free blacks became dependent on charity.

Suffering Wretched

Famine was widespread among the Black Loyalists in 1789.

Search the Site

No Frames Please