Edward Cornwallis

Edward Cornwallis
Edward Cornwallis by the painter Joshua Reynolds (1756)
Born	5 March 1713 London, England
Died	14 January 1776(1776-01-14) (aged 62) Gibraltar
Buried at	Culford, Suffolk
Allegiance	Kingdom of Great Britain
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1730s-1776
Rank	Lieutenant General
Unit	8th Foot
Commands held	20th Foot, 40th Foot, 24th Foot
Battles/wars	War of the Austrian Succession Father Le Loutre's War Seven Years' War
Relations	Charles Cornwallis, 4th Baron Cornwallis - father Lady Charlotte Butler - mother
Other work	Governor of Gibraltar

Lieutenant General Edward Cornwallis (5 March 1713 – 14 January 1776) was a British military officer who founded Halifax, Nova Scotia with 2,576 settlers and later served as the Governor of Gibraltar.

Early life

He was the sixth son of Charles, fourth Baron Cornwallis, and Lady Charlotte Butler, daughter of the Earl of Arran. The Cornwallis family possessed large estates at Culford in Suffolk and the Channel Islands. His grandfather, Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, was First Lord of the Admiralty. (His nephew, Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, would become a British general in the American War of Independence, and was later Governor-General of India.)

A twin brother to Frederick Cornwallis, both Edward and Frederick were made royal pages at the age of 12. They were enrolled at Eton school at 14, and at age 18, Edward was commissioned into the 47th Regiment of Foot in 1731.

Military career

War of the Austrian Succession

Cornwallis participated in the Battle of Fontenoy during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Jacobite Rising of 1745.

Founding of Halifax

Cornwallis Statue by renowned New York sculptor J. Massey Rhind, Halifax, Nova Scotia (1931)

The British Government appointed Cornwallis as Governor of Nova Scotia with the task of establishing a new British settlement to counter France's Fortress Louisbourg. He sailed from England aboard HMS Sphinx of 14 May 1749, followed by a settlement expedition of 15 vessels and about 2500 settlers. Cornwallis arrived at Chibouctou Harbour on 21 June 1749, followed by the rest of the fleet five days later. There was only one death during the passage due to careful preparations, good ventilation and good luck, a remarkable feat when Transatlantic expeditions regularly lost large numbers to disease.

Cornwallis was immediately faced with a difficult decision: where to site the town. Settlement organizers in England had recommended Point Pleasant due to its close access to the ocean and ease of defence. His naval advisors opposed the Point Pleasant site due to its lack of shelter and shallows which would not allow ocean-going ships to dock. They wanted the town located at the head of Bedford Basin, a sheltered location with deep water. Others favoured Dartmouth. Cornwallis made the decision to land the settlers and build the town at the site of present day Downtown Halifax halfway up the harbour with deep water, protected by a defensible hill (later known as Citadel Hill). By 24 July, the plans of the town had been drawn up and on 20 August lots were draw to award settlers their town plots in a settlement that was to be named "Halifax" after Lord Halifax the President of the Board of Trade and Plantations who had drawn up the expedition plans for the British Government.

Relations with the Wabanaki Confederacy

Edward Cornwallis by Sir George Chalmers (1755)

One of Cornwallis' first priorities was to make peace with the Wabanaki Confederacy, which included the Mi'kmaq. (The Confederacy had been aligned with New France through four wars starting with King William's War.) A group of Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and single band of Mi'kmaq met with Cornwallis in the Summer of 1749. They agreed with the British to end fighting and renewed an earlier treaty drafted in Boston, redrafted as the Treaty of 1749.

However Cornwallis' peace efforts were doomed to failure. The treaties signed at Halifax represented mostly native groups in New Brunswick. Most Mi'kmaw leaders in Nova Scotia regarded the unilateral establishment of Halifax as a violation of an earlier treaty with the Mi'kmaq people (1726), signed after Father Rale's War. Mi'kmaw leaders met at St. Peters in Cape Breton in September 1749 to respond to British moves. They composed a letter to Cornwallis making it clear that, while they tolerated the small garrison at Annapolis Royal, they completely opposed settlement at Halifax: "The place where you are, where you are building dwellings, where you are now building a fort, where you want, as it were, to enthrone yourself, this land of which you want to make yourself absolute master, this land belongs to me". Cornwallis had no authority to respond by abandoning the Halifax expedition and Mi'kmaw leaders regarded the Halifax settlement as "a great theft that you have perpetrated against me."

A wave of Mi'kmaw attacks began immediately after the letter. At Chignecto Bay, two British ships were attacked while two others were seized at Canso. At Halifax, attacks began on settlers and soldiers outside the fortified township, beginning with the first of several raids on the longhouse settlement at Dartmouth across the harbour. This stage of the long-running Anglo-Mi'kmaw conflict is known by some historians as Father Le Loutre's War.

Father Le Loutre's War

The table first used by Edward Cornwallis and the Nova Scotia Council (1749), The Red Chamber of Province House (Nova Scotia)

Cornwallis sought to project British military forces by establishing forts in the largest Acadian communities, which were located at Windsor (Fort Edward), Grand Pre (Fort Vieux Logis) and Chignecto (Fort Lawrence). As a result, during Cornwallis' three years in Nova Scotia, Acadians and Mi'kmaq people orchestrated attacks on the British at Chignecto, Grand Pre, Dartmouth, Canso, and Halifax. The French erected forts at present day Saint John, Chignecto and Port Elgin, New Brunswick. Cornwallis's forces responded by attacking the Mi'kmaq and Acadians at Mirligueche (later known as Lunenburg), Chignecto and St. Croix.

Frontier warfare against families was the Wabanaki Confederacy and New England approach to warfare with each other since King William's War began in 1688. By the time Cornwallis had arrived in Halifax, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi'kmaq) protecting their land by killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745).

Fort Edward (Nova Scotia), named after Edward Cornwallis

As well, to prevent the French and Wabanaki Confederacy massacres of British families, prior to Cornwallis, there was a long history of Massachusetts Governors issuing bounties for the scalps of Indian men, women, and children. Cornwallis followed New England's example when, after the Raid on Dartmouth (1749), he protected the first British settlers in Nova Scotia from being scalped by putting a bounty on the Mi'kmaq (1749).

In Acadia and Nova Scotia, both the British and Wabanaki Confederacy engaged in frontier warfare or total war, that is, both sides of the conflict repeatedly killed combatants and non-combatants. While the British paid the New England Rangers for Mi'kmaq scalps, the French paid members of the Wabanaki Confederacy for British scalps. At the same time the British were adopting an uncomplicated, racially based view of local politics, several leaders of the Mi'kmaq community were developing a similar stance. According to historian Geoffery Plank, both combatants understood their conflict as a "race war", and both the Mi’kmaq and British were “singlemindedly” determined to drive each other from the peninsula of Nova Scotia.

After eighteen months of inconclusive fighting since the outbreak of the war, uncertainties and second thoughts began to disturb both the Mi’kmaq and the British communities. By the summer of 1751 Governor Cornwallis began a more conciliatory policy. For more than a year, Cornwallis sought out Mi’kmaq leaders willing to negotiate a peace. On 16 February 1752, hoping to lay the groundwork for a peace treaty, he repealed his 1749 proclamation against the Wabanaki Confederacy. He eventually gave up, resigned his commission and left the colony in October 1752. (Shortly after Cornwallis' departure, Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope signed the only peace treaty of the war, which was ultimately rejected by most of the other Mi'kmaq leaders. Cope burned the treaty six months after he signed it.)

Cornwallis left Nova Scotia in 1752, three years before Father Le Loutre's War ended in 1755.

Seven Years War

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War

In November 1756 Cornwallis was one of three colonels who were ordered to proceed to Gibraltar and from there embark for Minorca, which was then under siege from the French. Admiral John Byng called a council of war, which involved Cornwallis, and advised the return of the fleet to Gibraltar leaving the garrison at Minorca to its fate. Cornwallis was also one of the senior officers in the September 1757 Raid on Rochefort which saw a failed amphibious descent on the French coastline.

Cornwallis Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Governor of Gilbraltar

Cornwallis served as the Governor of Gibraltar from 14 June 1761 to January 1776 when he died at the age of 63.

His body was returned to England and laid to rest at Culford Parish Church in Culford, near Bury St. Edmunds on 9 February 1776.

Legacy

Led by the efforts of Daniel N. Paul, there has been much public attention in the twenty-first century on Cornwallis' use of frontier warfare against Mi'kmaq civilians. Paul accuses Cornwallis of committing "genocide". Historians have asserted that this position distorts the past, paying little regard for the historical context of Cornwallis' decisions. Frontier warfare against civilians was standard practice during the colonial period - Mi'kmaq leaders and New England Governors had endorsed this type of warfare since King William's War (1688). Further, rather than being intent on genocide, Cornwallis tried to create peace treaties with the Mi'kmaq before and after the 18 month bounty he imposed. As well, had Cornwallis been intent on genocide of aboriginal peoples, he would have also put a bounty on the other tribes in the region. Instead, Cornwallis was able to create peace treaties with the other tribes.

Because of the efforts of Paul, in 1995 Cornwallis Place (Halifax) was changed to Summit Place. As well, in June 2011, Cornwallis Junior High School Paul influenced the Halifax regional school board to vote unanimously to change the school's name because of Cornwallis' legacy of offering a bounty for the scalps of Mi'kmaq. Rather than destroying the statue, Paul has recently joined historian John G. Reid to advocate that the complexity of Cornwallis' legacy needs to be told by putting the statue in a museum or adding interpretive panels beside the existing statue.

• A statue of Edward Cornwallis was erected in 1931 by J. Massey Rhind, an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy. The statue stands at the center of Cornwallis Park in downtown City of Halifax.
• Canadian Forces Base Cornwallis, a former Canadian Forces Base located in Deep Brook, Nova Scotia, was named in his honour.
• He is also the namesake of Cornwallis Street (Halifax), Cornwallis Street (Shelburne), Cornwallis River and Cornwallis Park, Nova Scotia
• A number of ships were named after Cornwallis including the 1944 harbour ferry Governor Cornwallis and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship CCGS Edward Cornwallis.

In popular culture

• Edward Cornwallis is the subject of The Hampton Grease Band song entitled "Halifax" which appears on the double album Music to Eat.

See also

• Military history of Nova Scotia

References

Texts

• John Grenier. The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. Oklahoma University Press.2008
• John Grenier. The first way of war: American war making on the frontier, 1607-1814 Cambridge University Press. 2005
• Geoffrey Plank, “The Two Majors Cope: the boundaries of Nationality in Mid-18th Century Nova Scotia”, Acadiensis, XXV, 2 (Spring 1996), pp. 18–40.
• Geoffrey Plank. An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign Against the Peoples of Acadia. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001
• Geoffrey Plank. "New England Soldiers in the Saint John River Valley: 1758-1760" in New England and the Maritime provinces: connections and comparisons By Stephen Hornsby, John G. Reid. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2005. pp. 59–73
• John Faragher. A Great and Nobel Scheme. Norton. 2005. p. 405.

Endnotes

External links

• Documentary on Cornwallis Statue - CBC Radio - Maritime Magazine Archives
• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Centre Acadien (1996)
• Cornwallis - Founder of Freemasonry in Halifax

Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Stephen Cornwallis John Cornwallis	Member of Parliament for Eye 1743–1749 With: John Cornwallis 1743–1747 Roger Townshend 1747–1748 Nicholas Hardinge 1748–1749	Succeeded by Nicholas Hardinge Courthorpe Clayton
Preceded by Viscount Trentham Sir Peter Warren	Member of Parliament for Westminster 1753–1762 With: Viscount Trentham 1753–1754 Sir John Crosse 1754–1761 Viscount Pulteney 1761–1762	Succeeded by Viscount Pulteney Hon. Edwin Sandys
Military offices
Preceded by Richard Philipps	Colonel of the 40th Regiment of Foot 1750–1752	Succeeded by Peregrine Hopson
Preceded by The Marquess of Lothian	Colonel of the 24th Regiment of Foot 1752–1776	Succeeded by William Taylor
Preceded by The Earl of Home	Governor of Gibraltar 1761–1776	Succeeded by Sir John Irwin