Madelaine DrohanIt was a pleasure speaking with the knowledgeable Steve Paikin about why events that happened 250 years ago still matter today.
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When Benjamin Franklin fled Montreal for Philadelphia on May 11, his two fellow commissioners remained behind in the hope that they might still be able to salvage the American invasion of Canada and set up a new government. Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton (pictured) soon realized the army sent north by the Continental Congress was incapable of capturing and holding the entire British colony.
“We want words to describe the confusion which prevails through every department relating to the Army,” they said in a letter to the Continental Congress written #OTD May 17, 1776. “Several of your officers appear to us unfit for the stations they fill. Your troops live from hand to mouth; they have of late been put to half allowance in several places; and in some they have been without pork for three or four days past.”
#hedidnotconquer #canada #history #books #americanrevolution @dundurnpress
Guy Carleton, British governor of the colony of Canada, showed mercy to American invaders when they abandoned their siege of Quebec City on May 6 and fled into the woods.
#OTD May 10, 1776, he instructed the militia to search for these “deluded subjects,” who were likely suffering from wounds and were “in great danger of perishing for want of proper assistance.”
“Afford them all necessary relief and convey them to the general hospital, where proper care shall be taken of them,” he proclaimed.
“And lest a consciousness of past offences should deter such miserable wretches from receiving that assistance which their distressed system may require, I hereby make known to them, that as soon as their health is restored they shall have free liberty to return to their respective provinces.”
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Stanbridge East lies close to the path American invaders took in 1775 as they fought their way to Montreal — and their hasty exit in 1776.
It was delightful to talk to current residents yesterday at the Missisquoi Museum. Among the museum’s exhibits is a British military uniform worn by a loyalist in the American Revolution.
My thanks to Rosemary Wagner (left), the museum board and staff, and the residents for a great evening!
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Will the next revolution start in Canada?
I wrote about the similarities between Canadians today and American colonists prior to the revolution.
There are more than you think.
When Benjamin Franklin arrived in France in December 1776, he stayed with Jacques-Barthélémy Gruel, a Nantes shipowner who made a fortune in the slave trade.
Among Gruel’s ships was the Marie-Séraphique, which transported between 302 and 361 enslaved people on each of its four trips from Africa to the French West Indies between 1769 and 1773.
Franklin and some of his fellow revolutionaries sought the support of Nantes merchants and shipowners in transporting weapons and other goods across the Atlantic Ocean during the American Revolution.
We know of the ship and its history because of a rare detailed drawing in the Nantes history museum. The exhibit and a memorial to the abolition of slavery elsewhere in the city acknowledge that Nantes was the leading French port in the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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I wish Mike Myers had given PM Mark Carney a statue of Sir Guy Carleton instead of General Isaac Brock.
Everything the PM said about the War of 1812 in his video address applies equally to the American invasion of Canada in 1775.
Only that time it was Carleton, the British governor of Canada, who united First Nations, French Canadians, and British inhabitants to fight alongside British soldiers and sailors and defeat the invaders.
That invasion was approved by the Continental Congress and backed by men now revered as founding fathers in the US, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
I remain perplexed why the 1775 invasion is forgotten while the 1812 invasion is remembered more often in Canada. I have my own ideas, but I would be interested in hearing what others think.
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Benjamin Franklin was in Saratoga on his way to Canada in 1776 when he began to have doubts about whether he and two colleagues could salvage the faltering American invasion of the British colony.
#OTD April 13, 1776, he wrote John Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress, saying the latest information he had received made him think “we shall be able to effect little there.”
He was right. His mission failed. Canada did not become the 14th colony.
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It was one thing for the Continental Congress to ask Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll, and Samuel Chase to go to Montreal and salvage the faltering American invasion of Canada.
It was quite another for them to get there. #OTD April 9, 1776, it took them an entire day to travel 51 km (32 mi) from Albany, NY, to Saratoga.
“The roads at this season of the year are generally bad, but now worse than ever, owing to the great number of wagons employed in carrying the baggage of the regiments marching into Canada, and supplies to the army in that country,” Carroll observed in his journal.
The general in charge of the invasion told Carroll there was a plan to connect Montreal with New York City by means of some locks and a canal at the top of Lake Champlain. That would make the journey easier. But it would cost £50,000.
#hedidnotconquer #history #canada #books #americanrevolution @dundurnpress
By April 1776, the American invasion of Canada was foundering, in part because the invaders were mistreating ordinary French Canadians.
“The peasantry in general have been ill-used,” rebel officer Moses Hazen admitted to a superior officer #OTD April 1, 1776. “They have in some instances been dragooned at the point of a bayonet to supply wood for the garrison at a lower rate than the current price.”
The invaders were also paying Canadians for things like carriages with certificates that were not honoured by the army quarter master because the signature was illegible or missing. The French Canadians were starting to think the Continental Congress was bankrupt, Hazen wrote.
As for the elite, which included the clergy and seigneurs, he thought seven-eighths supported the British and “would wish to see our throats cut and perhaps would readily assist in doing it.”
#hedidnotconquer #history #books #americanrevolution @dundurnpress
