Cumberland Planters and the Aftermath of the Attack on Fort Cumberland
Cumberland Planters and the Aftermath of the Attack on Fort Cumberland Ernest A. Clarke Halifax, Nova Scotia "There are many timorous and weak persons among us, who aw'd by fear, are drove to do what they would avoid, if they durst." John Eagleson, Anglican missionary and acting chaplain of Fort Cumberland, describing Cumberland Planters during the rebellion.1 ***** "O most mighty God," prayed the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary at Windsor. "Ruler of Heaven and Earth," prayed the Rev. William Ellis as H.M.S. Vulture sailed out Minas Basin to relieve Fort Cumberland in November 1776. "Re-unite the Divided interests and Distracted minds of our Countrymen. Defend us from Seditious rage at home and from the Designs of all our...enemies, wheresoever they may be!"2 A good many of the distracted wheresoevers were, even as Ellis prayed, surrounding Fort Cumberland where sedition had raged through the Planter community, for the past year and where the fort had been under attack for a month by a band of 180 guerrillas led by the self styled Colonel Jonathan Eddy.3 Inside the fort were about the same number of defenders: a garrison of provincial troops, the Royal Fencible Americans, and two dozen or more 1 Eagleson to John Butler, 27 January 1776, Public Archives of Canada (PAC), MG 11, Vol.95, 112-7. 2 Prayer, Discourses and Sermons of the Rev. William Ellis, Dalhousie University Archives. Ellis also was a chaplain at Fort Edward. 3 The Planter community of Cumberland was an amalgam of halfpay officers, farmers, tradesmen and artisans heavily dependent on the fort for their livlihood.
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