Books by Robert L. Dallison

On June 18, 1812, US President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Britain and launched an attack against the British colonies in North America in what he thought would be a quick and decisive land grab. Fearing invasion, the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, along with the citizenry, prepared for war. When the invasion failed to materialize, neutrality ruled along the New Brunswick-Maine border and New Brunswick turned its attention elsewhere. It supported the naval battles along the coast between the Royal Navy and American privateers and the British campaigns in Upper and Lower Canada by sending reinforcements and supplies along the grand communications route. With Napoleon's defeat in Europe, Britain refocused its military on North America. In addition to sending reinforcements to the campaigns in Upper and Lower Canada, the British Army invaded Maine, seized disputed lands along the Penobscot River Valley, and redrew the map so that, for a time, much of northern Maine would become part of New Brunswick. In this revealing account, Robert Dallison examines the repercussions of the War of 1812 in New Brunswick and Maine, how a once-friendly border turned hostile, how wartime growth turned villages into towns, and how the post-war settlement of British soldiers and Black Refugees changed the composition of the province's population.

In the 1860s, New Brunswick experienced its own brand of international terrorism. The Fenian Brotherhood sought the ouster of the British from their beloved Ireland and found support among Irish-American immigrants. Eager to help the cause, the American Fenian sympathizers planned to invade British North America and hold it hostage. New Brunswick, with its large Irish population and undefended frontier, seemed the perfect target. In the spring of 1866, a thousand Fenians massed along the southwest border of New Brunswick. But when Lieutenant-Governor Arthur Hamilton Gordon revitalized the New Brunswick militia, calling in British soldiers and a squadron of warships, the force proved too much for the enemy, who retreated and turned their efforts against the more vulnerable central Canada. The threat of this Fenian attack fanned the flames of an already red-hot political debate, and a year later, in 1867, New Brunswick joined Confederation.

In April 1775, the first shots of the American Revolutionary War were fired. They reverberated in what later became New Brunswick, when recent immigrants from New England rose in rebellion. The British moved quickly to crush these rebels, and after the war they made the new frontier with the United States secure by settling Loyalist regiments throughout the area. The result of this wave of British American settlers was the establishment of New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The motto of the Loyalists, Spem reduxit -- Latin for "hope restored" -- became the motto of the province they founded. Hope Restored tells the story of the Loyalist regiments that settled New Brunswick, describing their Revolutionary War exploits, the colourful and influential people who came with them to New Brunswick, and the part of their legacy that can be seen today. Hope Restored is the second volume in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.