SOURCE: Ballstadt, Carl. “Secure in Conscious Worth: Susanna Moodie and the Rebellion of 1837.” Canadian Poetry 18 (spring-summer 1986): 88-98.

In the following essay, Ballstadt explores the inconsistencies of theme and purpose in Moodie's political poems and prose published during the period of the Rebellion of 1837.

During the period of the Rebellion in Upper Canada in late 1837 and early 1838, Susanna Moodie, writing from her backwoods home in Douro township, entered the conflict on the government side with her poetic calls to loyal men to quell the rebel forces.¹ Several of these poems, “Canadians Will You Join the Band. A Loyal Song,” “The Oath of the Canadian Volunteers. A Loyal Song for Canada,” “The Banner of England,” and “The Burning of the Caroline,” appeared first in the Palladium of British America, and Upper Canada Mercantile Advertiser (Toronto), edited by Charles Forbes Fothergill (1782-1840),² and subsequently were given wide circulation through reprinting in...