God's Peculiar Peoples: Essays on Political Culture in Nineteenth Century Canada

Philip Sworden is an assistant professor in the Law and Justice
Department at Laurentian University.

This book of collected essays by historian S.F. Wise offers a convenient
source of study. Topics covered include sermon literature and its effect
on Canadian intellectual history; Conservatism and political development
(primarily in pre–Confederation Upper Canada); Canadian views of the
War of 1812 and the United States thereafter; and local Kingston
politics in the pre–Union (1841) era. Articles on Christopher
Hagerman, John Macaulay, and Tory factionalism in Kingston elections
reveal that Upper Canada’s Family Compact, centred at York, had close
local connections to this city, and that conservative politics in
Kingston did not begin, as many imagine, with John A. Macdonald. Of
particular interest in this volume is Wise’s examination of
Upper-Canadian Toryism.