Chesapeake Affair - Aftermath

Aftermath

While the Southern sympathisers believed they were engaging in an act of war because they had an official letter of marquee from the Confederacy, as the investigation into the affair unfolded, it was discovered there was no legality to their letter. As a result, rather than the Chesapeake affair being an official act of war, it was, in fact, an act of piracy and condemned as such by most of the newspapers in the Maritimes.

Many Southerners settled in Canada after the war. In Halifax approximately 30 senior Naval and Army officers from the South settled in the city. Some of the most prominent were John Wilkinson, Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, and John Taylor Wood.