The Loyalists of Pennsylvania by Wilbur H. Siebert, and: The Loyalists in the Revolution by Frank R. Diffenderfer (review)

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 403 Physical conditions in Canada made slavery on any large scale an impossibility, just as in New England, so that at no time were there ever any large number held in servitude in this country. Those who were so held were chiefly personal servants, many of them brought in by their owners from the United States. There was'one phase of the general question of slavery that affected Canada for many years, namely, the refuge accorded here to slaves escaping from their masters in the south and making their way to this country. On the eve of the Civil War in the United States Canada had a negro population of probably 30,000, most of them refugees , settled largely in ~outh-western Ontario and in two or three of the cities. Mr. Justice Riddell devotes one chapter of his study to this phase of the subject. Rendition of fugitives back to their masters became an issue in Canada on more than one occasion, but particularly in the John Andersonaffair in 1859. This case, which attracted attention in England and caused a sharp difference of opinion between the British government and the Canadian authorities, was regarded as a test case by the Missouri slave-holders, who pursued the negro for seven years before they succeeded in landing him in a court. Their disappointment was keen when the Canadian courts freed Anderson on a technicality, though it was obvious that the British government was stoutly opposed to his surrender in any case. Mr. Justice Riddell's study of slavery is well documented. He has drawn largely upon the resources of Canada's great storehouse of historical material, the Public Archives, and has also consulted freely the vast literature of slavery which resulted from the system being so widespread on this continent. Altogether he has produced a study that will be of permanent value. FRED LANDON The Loyalists of Pennsylvania. By WIL,BUR H. SIEBERT. (The Ohio State University Bulletin, vol. xxiv, number 23, April 1, 1920: Contributions in History and Politica1'Science, number 5.) Columbus : The Ohio State University. Pp. 117. The Loyalists in the Revolution. By FRANK R. DIFFENDERFER. (Papers Read lJefore the Lancaster Co:tlnty Historical Society: September 5 and November '7, 1919.) Lancaster, Pa. 1919. Pp. 113-125, 155-166. PROFESSOR SIEBERT has made a valuable contribution to the history of the Revoiution, restrict~d though it is to the operations of the Loyalists within the limits of the State of Pennsylvania. He appears to have impartially consulted all available original sources of information, and has carefully arranged his material under headings to which the subject 404 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW matter most readily lends itself. Th~, first two chapters are devoted to the Loyalists of the Upper Ohio and of north-eas~ern Pennsylvania, while the third deals with the efforts at repression in the south-e