Anti-Confederation Party

While many anti-confederationists threatened to secede and join the United States, Howe was a pragmatist and ultimately accepted Confederation as a fact.

He was soon persuaded to join the Cabinet of Sir John A. Macdonald, leading to the movement's collapse (1869).

"...the scheme [confederation with Canada] by them assented to would, if adopted, deprive the people [of Nova Scotia] of the inestimable privilege of self-government, and of their rights, liberty and independence, rob them of their revenue, take from them the regulation of trade and taxation, expose them to arbitrary taxation by a legislature over which they have no control, and in which they would possess but a nominal and entirely ineffective representation; deprive them of their invaluable fisheries, railways, and other property, and reduce this hitherto free, happy, and self-governed province to a degraded condition of a servile dependency of Canada."

There was also an Anti-Confederation Party in New Brunswick led by Albert James Smith, whose coalition of Conservatives and Reformers won the 1865 election.

Accordingly, in the 1867 federal election the Anti-Confederates did not win any of New Brunswick's fifteen seats in the House of Commons of Canada.