Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/MacNab, Allan Napier
MACNAB, Sir ALLAN NAPIER (1798–1862), Canadian soldier and politician, was born at Newark, now Niagara, Ontario, 19 Feb. 1798. His father, Allan MacNab, who had served as a lieutenant in the 3rd dragoons and the queen's rangers, and had been aide-de-camp to General Simcoe, settled in Upper Canada with his young wife, the daughter of Captain William Napier, commissioner of the port and harbour of Quebec. Soon after their son's birth the family moved to Toronto, where the father became a clerk in the office of the provincial secretary, William Jarvis, and young Allan was sent to a district school, and proved a dunce. He was fifteen at the time of the American invasion in 1813, and went to the front with his father in a small force of regulars and militia, which was driven back on Kingston. For a short time be was a midshipman on board H.M.S. Wolfe, carrying the broad pennant of Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo, and was present in the attack on Sacketts Harbour and other points on the southern shore "of Lake Ontario. Leaving the navy, he served as a volunteer with the 100th foot (afterwards disbanded as the 99th), and for his conduct at Fort Niagara in December 1813 received an ensigncy in the 49th foot in March 1814. After serving in the engagements at Fort Erie, Buffalo, and Black Rock, he joined his regiment at Montreal, and was in charge of the advance-guard at Saranac bridge in the Plattsburg fiasco.
At the peace he left the army, and became an articled clerk in the office of the attorney-general, and a government copyist. In 1821 he married, and in 1826 was called to the Canadian bar, and removed to Hamilton to practise there.' In 1829 he was first introduced to public life. The 'Hamilton outrage,' as a parade through the streets of an effigy of the lieutenant-governor, Sir John Colborne [q. v.], was called, became the subject of parliamentary inquiry. MacNab refused to testify on certain points, as tending to incriminate himself. He was taken into custody by the serjeant-at-arms, on the motion of James Lyon Mackenzie [q. v.], the leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada eight years later, and was committed to the common gaol. His confinement was brief, but the conservatives regarded him as a political martyr, and chose him for their candidate at the general election of 1830. He was returned to the House of Assembly as member for Wentworth county, and one of his first acts as a legislator was to second a motion for the commitment of Mackenzie for breach of privilege in the publication of a newspaper article reflecting on the policy of the government. Party feeling at that time ran very high. In 1837 MacNab was elected speaker of the House of Assembly, which post he held until the union of the provinces in 1841. He sat for Wentworth county for three terms, and afterwards for Hamilton. On the outbreak of the rebellion of 1837-8 MacNab turned out with his militia battalion—known by the rebels as 'the men of Gore'—defeated the rebels at Montgomery's tavern, cleared the neighbouring districts, and cut adrift the schooner Caroline, belonging to a body of American 'sympathisers,' who had taken possession of Navy Island, a little above Niagara, and sent her in flames over the falls (cf. Alison, Hist. of Europe, vi. 87-90). For his active and spirited conduct he was knighted 21 March 1838. He received the thanks of the colonial legislature, and was retained as a queen's counsel.
Soon after the union of 1841 MacNab became leader of the conservatives, then in opposition. On the defeat of the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry he was elected, for a second time, in 1844, to the speaker's chair. He served four years as speaker, and in 1848 again led the conservatives, then once more in opposition. He vehemently opposed the Lafontaine rebellion losses bill, and went to England to invoke imperial interference, in which he failed, although he was supported by Mr. Gladstone. On the defeat of the Hincks-Morin ministry in 1854, MacNab, at the invitation of the governor-general, Lord Elgin [see Bruce, James (1811-1863), eighth Earl of Elgin and twelfth Earl of Kincardine], formed a coalition ministry with Mr. Morin, of which MacNab's lieutenant, Sir John Alexander Macdonald [q. v.], was the active spirit. MacNab was a martyr to the gout, and when he went to England in 1867, in search of rest and change of air, Macdonald succeeded him, contrary to MacNab's wish. MacNab settled near Brighton, Sussex, where his health improved. An old-fashioned tory in English politics, he contested unsuccessfully the representation of Brighton in the English House of Commons, and was created a baronet by Lord Derby 5 Feb. 1858. In 1860 he returned to Hamilton, was elected member by a majority of twenty-six votes, and became partly reconciled with Macdonald. While in England he had been consulted by the government on colonial defences, and was made honorary colonel in the British army and one of the militia aides-de-camp to the queen, and was appointed to command a Canadian military district. He accompanied the Prince of Wales during his visit to Canada in 1861. At the opening of the parliamentary session of 1862 MacNab was chosen speaker for a third time. His old complaint had returned, and at the close of the session he was scarcely able to reach his home at Toronto, where he died six weeks after, 8 Aug. 1862, when the baronetcy became extinct. All his life MacNab had been a member of the church of England, but on his death his sister-in-law, wno had been attending him, announced that he died in the Roman catholic faith, and he was buried as a Roman catholic. Public opinion was greatly excited on the subject. Many of MacNab's old friends and colleagues refused to attend his funeral, and a violent controversy followed in the colonial press.
MacNab married, first, 6 May 1821, Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant Daniel Brooke of Toronto (she died in 1825); secondly, 30 Sept. 1831, Mary, eldest daughter of John Stuart, sheriff of Johnstown district, Upper Canada (she died in 1845). MacNab had four daughters, two by each wife. The elder daughter by his second wife is now Countess of Albemarle.
[Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 1864, under 'MacNab' (extinct); biography, with vignette portrait, in Appleton's Encycl. Amer. Biog.; Army Lists. For particulars of MacNab's services in the rebellion of 1837-8, see Annual Registers under dates, and Sir F. B. Head's Emigrant]