{"id":237932,"date":"2025-05-12T11:22:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T11:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/how-the-thirteen-colonies-tried-and-failed-to-convince-canada-to-side-with-them-during-the-american-revolution\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:22:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T11:22:17","slug":"how-the-thirteen-colonies-tried-and-failed-to-convince-canada-to-side-with-them-during-the-american-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=237932","title":{"rendered":"How the Thirteen Colonies Tried\u2014and Failed\u2014to Convince Canada to Side With Them During the American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"


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America’s 250th Anniversary<\/a><\/p>\n

A Smithsonian<\/i> magazine special report<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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After peaceful attempts at alliance-building stalled, the Continental Army launched an ill-fated invasion of Quebec in June 1775<\/h2>\n
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Eli Wizevich<\/a><\/p>\n

– History Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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A John Trumbull painting of the death of American General Richard Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec on December 31, 1775
\n Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>
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The first governing document of the United States of America offered Canada a deal. Adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777, the Articles of Confederation<\/a> stated that Canada\u2014then a British colony\u2014\u201cshall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union,\u201d at any time, no questions asked. All other colonies that wished to join the nascent nation would have to get approval from 9 of the U.S.\u2019s 13 states.<\/p>\n

Canada, of course, never took the U.S. up on its offer. Still, the proposal was no whim of statecraft. Instead, it was part of a prolonged effort<\/a> during and after the Revolutionary War to convince Canadians to buy into a future free from British dominion.<\/p>\n

In 1775, two years before the Articles of Confederation offered Canada statehood, American persuasion took a more aggressive shape. After months of failing to peaceably convince Canadians to join the rebellion against the British, the Continental Army began the supposedly friendly invasion of Quebec<\/a>. The goal, wrote the army\u2019s commander, George Washington, in his \u201cAddress to the Inhabitants of Canada<\/a>,\u201d was \u201cnot to plunder, but to protect you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early successes for the Continental Army faltered in the face of a dramatic defeat<\/a> at Quebec City\u2019s heavily fortified citadel on New Year\u2019s Eve, effectively ending the first foreign invasion by the Thirteen Colonies just months after it began.<\/p>\n

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A depiction of fierce street fighting during the Battle of Quebec<\/p>\n

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In subsequent centuries, the failed Quebec campaign became little more than a strange\u2014and largely forgotten\u2014episode from the shaky first year of the war. As historian Mark R. Anderson<\/a> writes in The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America\u2019s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774-1776<\/em><\/a>, scholars have tended to relegate it to the footnotes because it does \u201cnot fit comfortably in either country\u2019s national narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the invasion of Quebec is anything but irrelevant to the creation of the U.S. and the formation of modern Canadian identity. As the 250th anniversary<\/a> of the military campaign approaches, it\u2019s worth pulling the history back out of the footnotes.<\/p>\n

Why the patriots wanted Quebec to join their revolution<\/h2>\n

After Great Britain emerged victorious in the French and Indian War<\/a>, a clash with France over territory in North America, in 1763, it faced a difficult task: managing Quebec, a sprawling former French colony where the Catholic majority had little in common with their new Protestant rulers. To heal the wounds of the war and streamline governance, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act<\/a> in 1774. The legislation\u2019s compromises were significant. The criminal law code became British, while civil and property law in the province continued to follow the French model. The act largely preserved Quebec\u2019s feudal land distribution system<\/a>, and it allowed residents the right to freely practice \u201cthe religion of the Church of Rome,\u201d so long as they stayed loyal foremost to Britain\u2019s king, George III<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The act\u2019s most controversial reform, however, was expanding the official boundary of Quebec to the Ohio River Valley, which conflicted with prominent American colonists\u2019 property interests<\/a> and their hopes of expanding on the Western frontier. Many residents of the lower Thirteen Colonies took the Quebec Act as yet another instance of \u201cministerial tyranny\u201d akin to the Coercive Acts<\/a>, which were passed that same year to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party<\/a> and other incidents of unrest in the city, as Anderson tells Smithsonian <\/em>magazine.<\/p>\n

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A map of\u00a0British America\u00a0showing the original boundaries of the Province of Quebec and its boundaries after the passage of the 1774 Quebec Act<\/p>\n

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This line of thinking goes some way in explaining why the delegates of the First Continental Congress<\/a> wholeheartedly condemned<\/a> the Quebec Act\u2014and Quebec itself\u2014in September 1774 as \u201cdangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America.\u201d<\/p>\n

But just a month later, in what Holly A. Mayer<\/a>, an emeritus historian at Duquesne University, calls a \u201ctremendous flip,\u201d the delegates started trying to court French Canadians to join their anti-British crusade instead.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a>, the delegates impelled their \u201cfriends and fellow subjects\u201d to join them in demanding self-government and other rights from their British rulers. Quebec, they wrote, was \u201cthe only link wanting to complete the bright and strong chain of union.\u201d Where religious differences once threatened enmity, the delegates were now convinced that both sides were \u201cabove all such low-minded infirmities.\u201d If Switzerland had Catholic and Protestant communities living in \u201cthe utmost concord and peace,\u201d the letter\u2019s authors mused, so could the United Colonies<\/a>, as the not-yet-independent proto-state was then called.<\/p>\n

The reason for this remarkable switch in attitude was the delegates\u2019 realization that having a heavyweight colony like Quebec on their side would amplify the American Colonies\u2019 protests against British tyranny. It would also mean that British troops couldn\u2019t crush the rebellion from the north. \u201cExigency sparked enlightenment,\u201d Mayer tells Smithsonian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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John Brown’s Letter From Montreal – March 29, 1775 – REAL TIME REVOLUTION\u2122<\/p>\n

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