Black History Month

Nova Scotians Fought Against Slavery

– Tony Seed –

Much has been written about the Underground Railroad bringing slaves to the Canadas, less about its terminus in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but virtually nothing about the participation of Nova Scotians, white and black, in the blood spilled in the U.S. Civil War, and the motives impelling so many to make such sacrifices.

In Thomas H. Raddall’s Halifax: Warden of the North, the author writes: “One ‘Highland’ regiment raised in Boston in 1861 consisted almost wholly of Nova Scotians, some of whom were members of the Halifax militia; and their tales of battle appearing in letters to home newspapers were followed with all the avidity of a people at war.”

In Nova Scotia in the 1860s general public opinion sympathized with the North. But society was divided. Part of the aristocracy openly supported the southern slavocracy and Britain.

Yet on May 13, 1861 — in response to the blockade of the Confederate ports declared by the United States in April — Queen Victoria issued a proclamation of neutrality in the war between the Northern and the Southern states. It stated that the blockade of the South would be approved only if it were effective. At the same time it recognized the right of the Confederates to seize Federal ships on the high seas. Britain recognized the belligerent status of the Confederacy in fact.

Transports packed with troops and war materiel were rushed to Canada (the ports of Halifax, Saint John and Rimouski); 5,000 British troops swarmed Halifax, the old defence works of the port were recast and, by 1865, some 60,000 Nova Scotians had been trained for the militia.

“Thus, there was a little War between the States in Halifax itself, each with its own ardent group of Haligonian supporters,” Raddall observes.

“It was said that by the war’s end not less than 10,000 Nova Scotians had fought in the blue ranks of the North… The general sentiment against slavery gave a majority for the North…”

Similarly, various anti-slavery societies appeared in the Canadas with the goal of aiding escaped slaves from the United States who sought refuge in Canada — the Underground Railroad.

It was mainly by small farmers and fishermen, traders and artisans from rural Nova Scotia who enlisted, But the benefits of the conflict went to “Haligonian South Enders.” War is an enormous source of profit. “By 1862 one third of the ships entering the port of Boston were windjammers from Nova Scotia… Halifax was as prosperous as never before in all her boom and bust history. The city was glutted with money.”

An important element of the aristocracy, including descendants of slave-owning Loyalists — the Ritchie family, Keiths and others — sided with the South, providing new ships, smuggling and the new business of blockade-running, and giving hospitality to Confederate agents and legal support to captains of captured naval ships.

“In Halifax, the pro-South sentiment was strong,” Raddall writes. Said one eyewitness, “The town was filled with Southern agents … [who] with the official classes and the military and the navy to win over, put no restraint on their lavishness.”

(Based on an article which appeared in Shunpiking Magazine’s Black History Supplement, 2000)

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