More about Sampson Salter Blowers in Halifax, NS
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In reply to:
Sampson Salter Blowers - Boston to Halifax, NS
Richard Brezet 12/27/03
BTW, SS Blowers middle name of "Salter" was also given to a downtown Halifax street just a block or two from Blowers Street.
By using GOGGLE.COM, from the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa, here is another account of Sampson Salter Blowers and his time in Nova Scotia after the Revolution.
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Blowers and Uniacke: A bitter rivalry
Imagine Nova Scotia’s top judge and the province’s leading law enforcement official fighting a duel. Such a spectacle nearly occurred in Halifax in 1798, when Chief Justice Sampson Salter Blowers challenged the attorney general, Richard John Uniacke, to fight a duel.
Uniacke was the patriarch of one of Nova Scotia’s most wealthy and influential families, a legal and political powerhouse who dominated the local government. Blowers was a leader among the Americans who had backed the wrong side in the Revolutionary War and fled to Nova Scotia. Their testy relationship epitomized the clash between locals and Loyalist newcomers for power and government jobs. Uniacke had designs on the chief justice’s post that went to Blowers in 1797, and succeeded Blowers as attorney general.
The two men had nearly squared off in 1791, after Blowers hired a servant that Uniacke had fired. Uniacke insulted and berated Blowers and the latter issued a challenge, but the authorities intervened and prevented a duel. Cooler heads again prevailed in 1798 after Uniacke got the better of one of Blowers’ associates, Loyalist lawyer Jonathan Sterns, in a street fight. Blowers, by now the chief justice, again issued a challenge to fight a duel. Uniacke accepted, but once again Halifax’s magistrates stepped in and ordered both men to keep the peace. Uniacke was never prosecuted for beating Sterns, even though the assault may have contributed to Sterns’ death not long afterwards.
For more information on the rivalry between Uniacke and Blowers, see Brian Cuthbertson, The Old Attorney General: A Biography of Richard John Uniacke (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1980), pp. 27-36.