Henry Alline

Henry Alline (pronounced Allen) (June 14, 1748 – February 2, 1784) minister, evangelist, and writer, who became known as "The Apostle of Nova Scotia". Born at Newport, Rhode Island. He became a New England Planter and served as an itinerant preacher throughout Maritime Canada and Northeastern New England from 1776 to 1784. His ministry coincided with the second Great Awakening period and he became the leader of the New Light movement in the Maritimes. Later in life he caught the attention of renowned theologian John Wesley. Alline is Canada's most prolific Eighteenth-century writer. His Journal is considered a classic of North American spiritualism and he is Canada's first great Protestant and one of its most important theological writers. He died at age 35 and is buried at North Hampton, New Hampshire.

The period of the early 1740s to 1784 was one of a struggle for hegemony of North America by Britain, significant religious upheaval in northeastern North America, and ultimately revolution in the Thirteen Colonies.

Just prior to Alline's birth the War of the Austrian Succession had just come to a close with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). Northeastern North America had been pulled into the conflict (see King George's War ); achieving a significant victory with the capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1745, only to have it returned, to the chagrin of New England, to France during Treaty negotiations. Over the next seven years a peace rested uneasily between Britain and France. By the mid-1750s conflict broke out again resulting in the Seven Years' War. Nova Scotia's population was decimated with the deportation of the Acadians.

With the removal of the common enemy, France, in North America a paradigm shift occurred in the political relationship between the British Metropole and its New World colonies. The deteriorating relationship in due course resulted in the American Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War.

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