WITHIN ARM’S REACH: POLITICAL VIOLENCE, VOLUNTARY ORGANIZING, AND THE BORDERLAND PRESS DURING THE CANADIAN REBELLION, 1834–1842

by

Stephen Robert Irvine Smith

A thesis submitted to the Department of History

In conformity with the requirements for

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Queen’s University

Kingston, ,

(September, 2017)

Copyright © Stephen Robert Irvine Smith, 2017 Abstract

This project focuses on voluntary organizing by the patriots and their use of the press between

1834 and 1842 in the and the , particularly in relation to the Canadian

Rebellion of 1837–1838. The dissertation argues that historians should conceive of the Rebellion as an attempt by the patriots to establish a new order through the press and voluntary associations, both before and after the outbreak of insurrection. First constitutionalists and then patriots turned to militarized organizing as a natural outgrowth of their voluntarist values. The press was an important factor in this organizing and beginning in 1836 saw the rise of a “patriot press” in Upper and . These newspapers existed as a republican borderland: they were committed to republicanism and independence for the Canadas and therefore sought to transcend the border by erasing the boundary between and republic in North America.

Past scholarship on the Rebellion has been segmented by “pre” and “post” 1837 and selective focus amongst Lower Canada, , or the United States. Studies have also concentrated heavily on the secret society, the Hunter’s Lodges, and their incursions into the

Canadas. The dissertation instead explores the evolving interplay between military organizing and civil society both in the U.S. and the Canadas, demonstrating the surprising extent to which this military organizing has been rooted in and shaped by of liberal voluntary associations and the press. Going beyond the narrow time-frame of the Rebellion, the dissertation provides a comprehensive and longer-term picture of how the patriot press continued and changed with its exile in the United States. The dissertation outlines the catalytic and animating role played by patriot editors in fostering a sense of community and common cause amongst patriots and their sympathizers as well as in engaging combatively with their constitutionalist counterparts in the Canadas. Also documented are the activities undertaken by ii patriot editors to police vigilantly the boundaries and membership of patriot organizations, particularly in respect to minorities, and to seek to delineate acceptable roles for women in patriot organizing.

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Résumé Ce projet a comme sujet d’étude les activités d’organisation voluntaires des patriotes et leur utilisation de la presse entre 1834 et 1842 aux Canadas et aux États-Unis, surtout en relation avec la rébellion de 1837 et 1838. La dissertation propose que les historien(ne)s devraient concevoir cette rébellion comme une tentative de la part des patriotes pour établir un nouvel ordre par le biais de la presse et des associations volontaires avant et après le déclenchement de l’insurrection. D'abord, les constitutionnalistes et ensuite les patriotes se sont concentrés sur une organisation militarisée comme une excroissance naturelle de leurs valeurs volontaristes. La presse jouait un rôle important dans leur organisation et, dès 1836 une presse « patriote » a commencé dans le Haut-Canada et le Bas-Canada. Ces journaux ont agi comme région frontalière républicaine. Ils se sont engagés envers le républicanisme et l'indépendance du

Canada. En conséquence, ils ont tenté de transcender la frontière en effaçant la distinction entre la monarchie et la république en Amérique du Nord. Dans le passé, les érudits de la rébellion l’ont scindée en deux parties, la période pré et post 1837. Ils ont aussi centré l’attention sur le

Haut-Canada, le Bas-Canada, ou les États-Unis. En même temps, les projets de recherche ont mis l’emphase sur la société secrète les Frères Chasseurs et leurs incursions aux Canadas. Au lieu de cela, cette dissertation fait l’examen de l'interaction évolutive entre les activités d’organisation militaire et la société civile aux États-Unis et dans les Canadas. La thèse démontre également le rôle inattendu de la presse et des traditions des associations volontaires libérales comme racines et leur influence majeure sur ces activités d’organisation militaire. La dissertation va au-delà de la courte durée de la rébellion pour donner un aperçu global et à plus long terme qui montre comment la presse patriote a survécu et évolué en exil aux États-Unis. La dissertation décrit le rôle catalyseur et animateur joué par les éditeurs patriotes dans la promotion d’un sentiment

iv d’appartenance et d’objectif commun dans les esprits des patriotes et leurs sympathisants. La thèse montre également comment les éditeurs patriotes ont engagé combativement leurs homologues constitutionnalistes dans les canadas. La dissertation documente aussi les activités entreprises par les éditeurs patriotes pour faire respecter les limites externes et l'adhésion des organismes patriotes surtout en ce qui concerne les groupes minoritaires. Elle décrit également leurs actions pour délimiter des rôles acceptables pour les femmes dans l'organisation patriote.

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Acknowledgements

This project is the product of a long study and long interest in these questions and this topic.

Rather than start at the beginning, I would like to begin my acknowledgments with those that help with the completion of this journey by thanking the external members of my doctoral committee. Ian Radforth, Laura Murray, and Kim Nossal agreed to join this project and provided great engagement with it in its final stages.

In the latter years of the doctorate, participation in two workshops really helped to grow and improve the dissertation. I would like to thank Elizabeth Mancke, Scott See, Jerry Bannister, and Denis McKim who invited me to take part in the project on Unrest, Violence and Search for

Social Order. I am honestly and truly grateful to be part of that amazing project. The progress I was able to make in growing, writing, and conceptualizing my dissertation was immense. I would also like to thank Julien Mauduit and Maxime Dagenais for inviting me to their workshop on the Rebellion and the United States. I also want to thank Thomas Richards for letting me comment on his paper at that workshop at McGill University. I was a pleasure to engage in person with much of the new work on the topic and it has improved mine. I hope I have done justice to their excellent work.

I am indebted to countless librarians and archivists for help locating and accessing hard to find issues of various newspapers buried deep in obscure collections. All of them should be listed here although I can only list three who went above and beyond. Bill Keeler of the Rochester

Historical Society, Tammis Groft at the Albany Institute of History and Art, and Justin White at the Oswego County Historical Society. I also want to acknowledge the Burton Historical

Collection of the Public Library. During the municipal bankruptcy the collection continued to be open, accessible, and free of and the staff remained professional and hard vi working under difficult circumstances. Dana Freiburger, when kindly asked by a friend of mine, went into the bowels of the Wisconsin Historical Society to take photos of two obscure newspapers for someone he never knew or met. Family friend Maurice Langlois helped make sure the French translation of the abstract was up to snuff.

To go on research trips and write required financial assistance. The people of Ontario though their support of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, Queen’s University, and its history department provided that helpful funding. Funds were also provided to me thanks to the labours of Donald S. Rickerd, and before him, that of the workers (waged and unwaged) of various Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo mills. Their century of work for William

H. Donner and his surviving wealth trickled down to help finance this dissertation thought “The

Donald S. Rickerd Fellowship in Canadian-American Studies.”

Throughout the doctorate, many friends and colleagues in the department offered great advice and support but I want to especially thank Sanober Umar, Nicolas Haisell, Georgia

Carley, Peter Price, Tabitha Renaud, Angela Duffett, and Dinah Jansen. As my officemate for a number of years, Angela was a good friend who always offered advice, conversation, and helped me to keep on track. Dinah has been a great help and a great friend, always generous with her advice and encouragement. I am especially thankful for her letting me stay on a cot in her front room when I returned to Kingston for final edits.

From the beginning of the PhD, Rosanne Currarino, Jane Errington, and my supervisor

Jeffrey McNairn have been constant in their interest and engagement with my topic and have always proffered excellent advice. Rosanne Currarino was always approachable and it was fun to

TA her class. Not only involved with the Doctorate, Jane Errinton and Jeff McNairn were also of immense help during the Masters and this forum provides an opportunity to properly

vii acknowledge all their help at that stage of this journey as well. Dr. Errington has always been keenly interested in my progress and I always looked forward to her potlucks. Jeff McNairn dealt deftly with many convoluted drafts as I worked to hone my themes and arguments. He has been an excellent mentor, a perceptive scholar, and a great supervisor. This work is far better thanks to his careful comments and guidance throughout the Masters and the Doctorate.

I began working on this topic during my undergraduate studies at Mount Allison

University. Kathleen Lord and Hannah Lane along with David Torrance nurtured my passion and interest in history. Dr. Lane, from a first year paper on the Rebellion to an undergrad honours thesis, helped me start down the road to becoming an historian.

Katharine Vingoe-Cram was first introduced to this project as I was still in its amorphous stages. She has seen and helped it come together and had learned more about the Rebellion then she bargained for. She offered support, encouragement, and a good eye for my writing as I worked the dissertation into something coherent, but also offered needed perspective on my situation.

Finally, I would like to thank the tireless support of my parents. Both were keen to see the project to completion and helped out in innumerable ways. Some of the tasks they undertook, without any hesitation, were reading parts of the dissertation for typos, offering editorial suggestions on many drafts, and even volunteering to help with the mind-numbing task of properly formatting the footnotes and the bibliography. This thesis was written and conceptualized primarily on Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Abenaki territory.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Résumé ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... vi List of Figures ...... x List of Tables ...... xi List of Abbreviations ...... xii

Chapter 1: Introduction Routes for Radical Action: Voluntary Associations and the Press ...... 1

Chapter 2 “Plans of action and not mere resolutions:” The Turn to Violence as an Outgrowth of Voluntary Organizing ...... 38

Chapter 3 “A powerful auxiliary in the cause:” The Rise of the Patriot Press Community ...... 85

Chapter 4 “Dear brethren in affliction:” The Language and Arguments of Community-Formation...... 153

Chapter 5 “If the British want war with them they will find some ‘clear grit’:” Voluntary Organizing, Secrecy, and Community in the Patriot Press ...... 213

Conclusion “The Spirit of 1837 Lives On:” Memory, Alternatives, and the Patriot Press Palimpsest ...... 261

Bibliography ...... 269

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Mackenzie’s Missouri (L) and unmodified (R) ...... 95

Figure 2: Geographic location of patriot newspapers ...... 111

Figure 3: Classification of patriot papers in the U.S. based on associated individuals ...... 123

Figure 4: Henry R. Robinson “British Warfare in 1812, 1837–38.” ...... 171

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List of Tables

Table 1: Patriot newspapers (organized by date of founding) ...... 87

Table 2: Location of patriot papers and associated individuals by date of founding ...... 110

Table 3: Patriot editors and Duncombe and examples of their respective “codes” ...... 238

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List of Abbreviations

BAnQ: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales de Québec

DCB: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

HORP: Henry O’Reilly Papers (New York)

LAC: Library and Archives Canada

LVBP: Lucius Verus Bierce Papers

PHOR: Papers of Henry O’Reilly (Rochester)

RVRP: Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Routes for Radical Action: Voluntary Associations and the Press

According to noted historian David Armitage, the question that this thesis seeks to investigate—the role of key mechanisms of civil society in violence—is inherently an oxymoron.1 Professor Armitage is correct in that the place and role ascribed to violence in civil society—at least in conventional wisdom—is pretty much nil. When then U.S.

President Barack Obama turned to justify force after receiving the 2009 Nobel Peace

Prize, he stated the same assumption: “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”2 Violence in this case is rooted in “human nature,” beyond reasoning and therefore contrary to deliberation and civil society. Yet, for a period, the history of the

Canadas witnessed violent challenges to state order and the emergence and continuation of this violence was closely reliant on newspapers and voluntary associations.

This project focuses on voluntary organizing by the patriots and their use of the press between 1834 and 1842 in the Canadas and the United States in relation to the

Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838. The dissertation advances three main arguments. First, it argues that historians should conceive of the Canadian Rebellion as an attempt by the patriots to establish a new order through the press and voluntary associations, both before and after the outbreak of insurrection.

1 On April 3, 2014, David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard visited Queen’s University at the invitation of the Queen’s Department of History. During a meeting with graduate students, Dr. Armitage asked each of us to state the central question we were seeking to answer through our research. 2 Barack H. Obama, Nobel Lecture: “A Just and Lasting Peace.” Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 2 July 2017. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html 1

Second, especially when considered within this longer timeframe, it becomes apparent that this attempt by the patriots to establish order was deeply tied to the border between the Canadas and the United States. While in the Canadas, the patriots sought to transcend the border with their drive for a new patriot order relying on bringing republican ideals associated with the U.S. north and erasing the boundary between monarchy and republic in North America. Once in exile in the U.S., the patriots continued to organize militarily but also, through patriot newspapers within civil society, sought to build a sense of community, shared experience, and common cause in their republican haven. Although in exile, patriot arguments continued to cross the border and elicited a response from the constitutionalist press that remained in the Canadas. The

Rebellion thus both transcended and hinged on the border. The dissertation’s focus beyond the 1837-38 temporal range and beyond national boundaries reveals changes in what was envisioned by this new order with the move to the United States.

This points to the third and final argument: if, in addition to taking a longer view, one considers the borderlands public sphere as a whole, we see more clearly the important role played by the patriot press, the multifaceted nature of patriot organizing in exile—both in public and in secret—and the relationship between the Canadian refugees and Americans who might assist them militarily and by other means.

For the first argument, the dissertation posits that, both before and after the outbreak of insurrection, the Canadian Rebellion constituted an attempt by patriots to establish a new order. I refer to order in two senses of the word. First, as an attempt to

“reconstitute legitimate rule on new foundations” separate from the existing authority of the British administration in the Canadas. Historian Allan Greer has cast the self-

2

organizing of habitants in the district of in the fall of 1837 as such an attempt.3 I argue that this project of ordering extended beyond habitant self-organizing and beyond the end of that organizing in November 1837 due to military suppression. For this study,

“violence” refers particularly to the armed and organized resistance to state structures and the destructive forces unleashed when the state re-imposed its authority.

In the second sense, I investigate order in the sense of the “orderly” nature to the

Rebellion, through two of the principal mechanisms to create order: the press and voluntary associations. The Rebellion has been conceived as a sort of interregnum between earlier colonial society and modern liberal state structures. Therefore much work on the period has continued to view the Rebellion’s significance ultimately as an episode of disorder. In this model, after this episode of rebellious violence and disorder, order must necessarily be “reconstituted.”4 The Rebellion is thus significant in its defeat of an alternative: civic humanism, radical , one form of Québec nationalism, republicanism, or a republican conception of liberty.5 The story then becomes how, after this defeat of an alternative, the forces of order were “reconstituted” or “recommitted” as a point of departure for a “modern” “Canada” in forms such as a Foucaudian bureaucratic state or a liberal order.6

3 Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (: Press: 1993), 6. 4 Ibid. 5 Ian McKay, “Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History” Canadian Historical Review 81 no. 4 (2000): 635; Greer, Patriots and the People, 362-363; Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson, Unequal Union: and the Roots of Conflict in the Canadas, 1815-1873 (Toronto: Progress Books, 1973); Louis-Georges Harvey, Le Printemps de L’Amérique française: Américanité, anticolonialisme et républicanisme dans le discours politique québécois, 1805-1837 (Montreal: Les Éditions du Boréal, 2005); Michel Ducharme, Le Concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques (1776-1838) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). 6 E.A. Heaman, A Short History of the State in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 96. For a Foucauldian bureaucratic state, see some of the contributions to Allan Greer and Ian Radforth, eds. 3

Initially, Rebellion historiography embodied what Allan Greer has labeled a

“police officer’s conception,” which viewed the government response as unremarkable – a legitimate response of the state to re-impose order.7 There has been a growing focus on the exceptionality of the period in terms of ideas of order and questions of governance with the suspension of the state in Lower Canada.8 However, “the Rebellion” – as in the challenge to state order – has still been cast in many works as the “blood-and- gunpowder” episodes of military conflict starting with the Battle of St. Denis.9 When the focus has included challenges to state order before November 1837, such efforts have been limited to Lower Canada.10 Where a new revolutionary vision in exile in the U.S. after the Rebellion has been the concern, there has been a focus on the role the Rebellion played for United States citizens to imagine an alternative to the existing American republic.11 This study bridges the gap between pre and post 1837 understanding of order.

Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) and Jean-Marie Fecteau, Un nouvel ordre des choses: la pauvreté, le crime, l'État au Québec, de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1840 (Outremont: VLB éditeur, 1989). For a liberal order, see McKay, “Liberal Order Framework,” 617-651. 7 Allan Greer, “1837–38: Rebellion Reconsidered” Canadian Historical Review 76, no 1. (1995): 5. 8 Maxime Dagenais, ““Le Conseil spécial est Mort, Vive Le Conseil spécial!” The Special Councils of Lower Canada, 1838-1841” (PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2011). Jarett Henderson “Uncivil Subjects: Metropolitan Meddling, Conditional Loyalty, and Lord Durham's 1838 Administration of Lower Canada” (PhD Dissertation, , 2010). 9 For the “blood-and-gunpowder” contention, see Greer, Patriots and the People, 7. See also the following scholarly and non-scholarly works: Réal Fortin, La Guerre des Patriotes le long du Richelieu (Saint-Jean: Éditions Mille Roches, 1988), 26. Fortin focuses on whether the patriotes intended to attack St. Jean. See also introductory remarks by André Larochelle, which focus on the fields “of honour,” 8. Gilles Boileau, comp., 1837 et les patriotes de Deux-Montagnes: les voix de la mémoire (Montreal: Méridien, 1998). Boileau compiles a range of documents from the period of the battles. Edward Humphreys, Great Canadian Battles: Heroism and Courage Through the Years (London: Arturus, 2014) Chapter 5; Donald E. Graves, Guns Across the River: The , 1838 (Prescott, ON: The Friends of Windmill Point, 2001). 10 Greer, Patriots and the People; Harvey, Printemps. 11 Andrew Bonthius, “The Patriot Wars of 1837: Locofocoism with a Gun?” Labour/Le Travail 52 (2003), 9-43, Anthony Comegna goes much further and declares that the Rebellion was entirely locofoco, based exclusively on a limited focus on Upper Canada. Anthony Comegna, “‘The Dupes of Hope Forever:’ The Loco-foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820-1870s,” (PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2016). As part of her biography of American A.D. Smith, Ruth Dunley explores his role in the patriots and his 4

More significantly, by investigating the press and voluntary associations, I not only point to the alternatives patriots sought (the what) but also ask how. How did patriots attempt to establish this new order both before and after exile?

I look for this “orderly” order in the patriot newspapers in the Canadas and the

United States. I also look for this order in the attempts at voluntary organizing advanced by and reported in those newspapers. It is in the press and in voluntary organizing that we can primarily see these projects of order. The patriot press and voluntary associations worked to create a new order in two ways. First, patriot newspapers and patriot voluntary organizing challenged the existing state order in the Canadas. Second, as the patriots used the press as a vehicle to help them organize and promote their agenda, they took part in the attempt to develop a social order rooted in a republican civil society independent of any state.

For understanding the challenge of the patriot press and organizing to state order,

I begin with Max Weber’s assertion that the modern state is defined by a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.12 I temper this use of theory by relying on the ‘pragmatic approach’ clarified by William Novak: studying the state through its on-the-ground outcomes and real-world functions rather than through seeing “the practical world

economic radicalism. Ruth Dunley, “A. D. Smith: Knight-errant of Radical ” (PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2008). Thomas Richards provides an excellent overview of how U.S. support for the Rebellion fits with other examples of U.S. territorial expansion as well as imaginings of the period (including envisioning an alternative to the existing U.S.). Thomas Richards Jr., “The Texas Moment: Breakaway Republics and Contested Sovereignty in North America, 1836-1846” (PhD Dissertation, Temple University, 2016). In another excellent addition to the scholarship, Julien Mauduit moves into interesting territory examining the exiles and their visions, however the focus is on how that influenced the United States. Julien Mauduit, “Vrais républicains d’Amérique: les patriotes canadiens en exile aux États- Unis (1837-1842),” (PhD Dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016). For coverage of Lower in exile more broadly see François Labonté, Alias Anthony St-John: Les Patriotes canadiens aux États-Unis décembre 1837 – mai 1838 première partie (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2004). 12 Max Weber, “Politics as Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 77-79. 5

according to ideal theoretical models.”13 State order and voluntary associations have a significant correlation because, as noted by Novak, public state power underlies even the most supposedly “private voluntary activity.”14 Case in point: E.A. Heaman argues that, in the case of agricultural societies, the state went so far as to partially fund their growth.15 Other scholars go further. Theda Skocpol, for instance, notes how the state and its elite have been instrumental in the creation of certain voluntary associations.16 Jean-

Marie Fecteau asserts that governments were originally wary of private associations and granted few of them recognition, and only if they pursued aims approved by the state.

The state became more willing to allow associations with the growth of the associational nature of bourgeois liberalism.17 In the American context, Johann Neem notes the early role of the state as a gatekeeper of what could and could not become a voluntary association.18

Second, from the nineteenth-century writings of Alexis de Tocqueville to more recent work by Jürgen Habermas, scholars have treated voluntary associations and the press as essential to the development of civic order: a means where individuals learned to deliberate and honed other civic skills, to limit state power and the tyranny of the

13 William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (2008): 764. 14 William J. Novak, “The American Law of Association: The Legal-Political Construction of Civil Society” Studies in American Political Development 15, no. 2 (2001): 163-188. 15 E.A. Heaman, The Inglorious Arts of Peace: Exhibitions in Canadian Society during the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), Chapter 2. 16 Theda Skocpol “Recent Transformation in Civil Life” in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004). See also Theda Skocpol, “Unravelling from Above,” The American Prospect no. 25 (1996): 20-25. 17 Jean-Marie Fecteau, “État et associationnisme au XIXe siècle québécois: Éléments pour une problématique des rapports État/société dans la transition au capitalisme” in Colonial Leviathan, 134-162. 18 Johann N. Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Cambridge: Press, 2008). 6

majority, and to advance common projects.19 Some of these same scholars have also noted the interrelated nature of the press and voluntary associations.20 Historians of this period in the Canadas have seen voluntary organizing and the press as complimentary ways contemporaries established civil order.21 Moving towards including violence, Ian

Radforth investigates the violent opposition by conservatives to the assent of the

Rebellion Losses Bill culminating in the burning of the parliament buildings in 1849.

Radforth argues that this opposition constituted a “muscular ”: a form of a popular conservatism “relatively unconstrained by the meeting hall’s rule of order” and a certain conception of masculinity.22 These displays of physical force and demonstrations of muscular conservatism contributed, along with deliberative democracy, to building a

19 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited and translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1835, 1840] 2000). J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. trans Thomas Burger with assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989). A good primer that helped me immensely is Gordon Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 20 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, especially volume 2 part 2, chapter 6, 493-495. Jeffrey L. McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791- 1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), see especially Chapter 2. Historian Margaret Jacob argues persuasively that European Freemasonry was very much entwined with the growth of a new deliberative and democratic public sphere that emerged during the Enlightenment. Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 17. 21 Darren Ferry, Uniting in Measures of Common Good: The Construction of Liberal Identities in Central Canada (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008); Andrew C. Holman, A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), Chapter, 4, 5; Heaman, Inglorious Arts of Peace; McNairn, Capacity to Judge; Michael Eamon, Imprinting Britain: Newspapers, Sociability, and the Shaping of British North America (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2015), see especially chapter 5; Duncan Koeber, “Early Political Parties as Mediated Communities” Media History 19, no.2 (2013): 125-138; Albert Schrauwers, “A Farmer's Alliance: The Joint Stock Companies of the Home District and the Economic Roots of Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada” Ontario History 99 no. 2 (2007): 190-220; Albert Schrauwers, “In Union There is Strength:” W.L. Mackenzie, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Gilles Gallichan, Livre et Politique au Bas Canada: 1791-1849 (Sillery: Septentrion, 1991), see especially Chapter 5; Claude Galarneau, “Sociabilité et associations volontaires à Québec, 1770-1859” Cahiers des dix 58 (2004): 171– 212. 22 Ian Radforth, “Political Demonstrations and Spectacles During the Rebellion Losses Controversy in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 92, no.1 (2011): 5. 7

public sphere.23 However, violence was decried by the press and deliberative democracy eventually won out.24 In this case, deliberative democracy and demonstrations of violence constitute and either-or scenario as this violence “ran counter to the etiquette of deliberative democracy.”25 But what if violence and the “meeting hall rules” could be symbiotic? In the United States, scholars have followed a similar trajectory. Amy S.

Greenberg chronicled how nineteenth-century volunteer fire companies provided both opportunities for “a republican ideal of citizenship” and ritualized violence while

Kimberly Smith notes the presence of “antideliberative” arguments against a publish sphere full of only reasoned debate. However, in both these cases reason won out over riot.26

Voluntary associations could disseminate newspapers as newspapers published proceedings of voluntary associations. Juliana Stabile argues that it was thanks to the distribution of the Constitution and the Correspondent and Advocate through political unions that the papers were read “widely throughout the colony and at no charge to readers, while conservative newspapers did not have such distribution.”27 Reform, patriote, or constitutionalist meetings and associations had particular papers they would

23 Ibid, 39. Radforth includes performance within the public sphere moving away from a purely deliberate definition. 24 Ibid, 41. 25 Ibid, 5. 26 Amy S. Greenberg, Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 84–90, 106; Kimberly K. Smith, The Dominion of Voice: Riot, Reason, and Romance in Antebellum Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), viii, part 1. 27 Juliana M. Stabile, “Toronto Newspapers, 1798-1845: A Case Study in Print Culture” (PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), 203. 8

invite to their meetings and forward proceedings to.28 What can be discerned if one looks at those same tools, the press and voluntary organizing facilitated by that press, as building “new foundations” that run counter to existing state order? After the military defeat of 1837 and the exile of Canadian patriots to the United States, how did this patriot ordering continue and change?

I first examine the development of a patriot order as reflected in the press coverage of new voluntary associations that challenged the existing state order in the

Canadas, such as the Sons of Liberty, and the formation of a new “patriot press:” a set of journals defined primarily by their near-open commitment to republicanism for the

Canadas.29 I then follow the patriot press through the outbreak of violence and into exile in the United States. I examine how patriots tried to reconstitute an order in exile in the

United States. I explore how they worked to define themselves partially through continued interaction with constitutionalists in the Canadas, and ask how they continued to believe in the benefits of association and engage in voluntary organizing in exile. By doing so, it is possible to reconceive of organizing around the Rebellion as extending beyond November 1837, beyond a disorderly interregnum, and beyond the emphasis in much of the scholarly literature on secret societies in exile. In addition, Greer has argued convincingly that the rebellions in Lower and Upper Canada are “best understood as

28 See, for example, the resolution of The Young Men’s Political Association of Vankleek Hill that the proceedings of its meeting be published in the Vindicator and the Constitution. Constitution 4 October 1837 p2 c2. 29 The term “patriot press” or “patriot newspaper” has been used before in the context of the Rebellion. Such similar terminology should not suggest a link with papers associated with other “patriot” movements such as the eighteenth-century Whig faction. See Robert Harris, A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 9

various elements of a single phenomenon.” 30 Understanding the Canadian Rebellion as an exercise in order deepens Greer’s conception of the Rebellion as a single phenomenon.

As such, I refer to the rebellions as a single “Canadian Rebellion.”31

The broader significance of a study of the press and voluntary organizing in this context is twofold. First, contemporaries perceived formally organized voluntary associations that included military drill unsanctioned by the state as a threat to the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Such organizations are an oxymoron given how voluntary associations are typically conceived. Second, I see the press as crucial, both as an agent to help organize patriots and as a forum in which positions are laid out and issues debated.

The involvement of the press in patriot organizing has been overlooked and, in the case of the United States, its importance is somewhat counterintuitive to the apparently secret nature of patriot organizing in exile.

I argue that this order had four elements. First, with the flight to the United States patriots had to make decisions and choices about how this order would be reformed in exile. While patriots held a number of radical views on the economy, racial justice, and women’s rights, only the former was reflected in their papers. In the Canadas, many

Blacks were opposed to an extension of U.S.-style republicanism into the Canadas due to

30 Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 8. 31 Greer also uses the term “Canadian Rebellion.” (Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 7). Much earlier, American historian Orrin Edward Tiffany used the term “Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838” as part of the title for his 1905 book, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian rebellion of 1837-1838 (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society Publications, Vol. 8, 1905.) A more significant discussion of what these events should be called could prove fruitful. Mauduit terms the events the “Canadian Revolution” and justifies the marker based not on the level of success or violence but rather the extent of patriots’ intellectual designs. While a vision certainly matters to conceiving a new order, for my project dissertation, how that challenge was made manifest to the existing order matters as a marker as well. At this time, although I could be persuaded, I have misgivings about the term “Revolution,” preferring to term the Rebellion a “Canadian revolutionary crisis.” Greer dislikes the term Rebellion for its connotations of “condescension.” However, like Greer, I use “Rebellion” for convenience sake. Mauduit, “Vrais républicain,” 94. Greer, Patriots and the People, 4–5. 10

the existence of slavery in the United States and many First Nations had an existing relationship with the British Crown. Consequently, the patriot press in the United States chose to cast Blacks and First Nations peoples as primarily opponents than to construct an alternative that included anti-slavery or racial justice. Patriots attacked their perceived loyalty in the press using common tropes of the day such as portraying them as deluded and dependents of the crown, thereby implicitly bounding the patriot community in the

U.S. as a white one. As well, the patriots attempted to build a new political order that nonetheless conformed to existing gender norms. Second, patriots maintained an order that was based on a belief in the constructive benefits of voluntary organizing. Patriot engagement with violence and secrecy to overturn the colonial state did not run counter to this belief but was rather informed by it. In the Canadas, new militarized voluntary associations emerged from public calls regarding the mutual benefit of associating. In exile, patriot editors remained wedded to these values and looked to new attempts at organizing through them. Third, patriots attempted to build a republican community of likeminded individuals, which believed in republicanism and the duty of the United

States to spread, or at least be a haven for, republicanism. The members of the developing patriot press community in the United States, both exiles and U.S. residents, held on to, and organized around, a similarly expansionary view of the republican project. For patriots, the belief in the press and in voluntary organizing was related to the ideals of republicanism. As opposed to monarchy and empire, republicanism was voluntary and deliberative. Finally, the order was still paradoxically defined by the border. The order was both transborder and state specific. It was transborder, with American founding texts informing patriots in the Canadas and with the use of American imagery, such as eagles

11

and U.S. state seals, by patriots in the Canadas. It remained transborder after exile with the continued concern with the Canadas by patriots in the United States and their continued engagement with the press in the Canadas. However, patriot attempts at order evolved from attempts in the Canadas to exile in the United States.

In this context, my second major argument is that the Rebellion both transcended and hinged on the border. The Rebellion transcended the border as, in a sense, it was an attempt to eliminate the conceptual border between monarchy and republic in North

America. The Rebellion hinged on the border as the survival of patriot attempts at order required the relatively safe haven of the United States due to the continuing permanence of that international border. The border was a real geo-political division and marked two images of political authority, but it was also porous. The importance of the border is also evident in how conceptions of patriot order shifted with the exile of the patriot press. For example, as will be seen in chapter 5, patriots shifted their organizing to conform to the different mores governing female participation in the public sphere in the U.S. as compared to the Canadas.

Viewing the patriot press as creating a borderland in both these ways, I hope to bridge the gap between literature which emphasizes a borderland as the interplay across a boundary and literature which emphasizes “a borderland” as a community that transcends a boundary.32 In the vein of historians Tony Freyer and Lyndsay Campbell, I define the

32 For examples of interplay, see the borderlands as “contact zones” in Gloria Anzaldúa Borderlands/la Frontera: The New Metiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the (New York: Random House, 2006); Oscar J. Martinez, Border People: Life and Society in the US-Mexico Borderlands (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994). For those emphasizing borderlands as “social spaces” see Sharon Pickering and Leanne Weber, eds. Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006); Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, “Special Section: Borders, Borderlands and 12

scope of the borderlands region geographically.33 The borderlands is the region where individuals came into contact and were influenced by the border on a regular basis. The border created a region of “constructed and disputed historicities, sites of displacement, interference and interaction.”34 The borderland region was also “historically transnational” owing to these cross border linkages, although the borderland as a homogenous community should not be overstated in this case.35 The border was an essential divide and the permanence of the border protected the patriots in exile.

Therefore, I will be following John J. Bukowczyk in arguing that “the Canada-U.S. border […] never was a fixed structure, but rather a bundle of contingencies presenting both opportunities and constraints.”36 By casting the border as a thing which provided

“opportunities and constraints” for the patriots I can also move away from a teleological analysis of when a “borderland” became a “bordered land.”37

Theory” Geopolitics 16, no. 1 (2011): 1-6. See also Holly M. Karibo. Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 33 “Introduction” in Tony Freyer and Lyndsay Campbell, eds. Freedom’s Conditions in the US-Canadian Borderlands in the Age of Emancipation (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 3. 34 Although discussing culture, travel, and translation, these words can apply equally to a borderland. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 25. 35 John J. Bukowczyk, “Region, Border, and Nation” in Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990, by John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis (Calgary and Pittsburgh: University of Calgary Press and University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 177. I do not follow work that sees the border as a region that has more in common internally than with each of the two nations it separates. See Lauren S. McKinsey and Victor A. Konrad, Borderlands Reflections: The United States and Canada, Borderlands Monograph Series 1 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press,1989), 4; Roger Gibbins, Canada as a Borderlands Society, Borderlands Monograph Series 2 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1989), iii. 36 Bukowczyk, 180. Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett, “On Borderlands” Journal of American History 98 no. 2 (2011): 338. 37 Adelman and Aron argue that over time borderlands transition to borderded lands. They posit that borderlands became bordered with the decline of European imperial involvement in the continent. Little, in his work on the Eastern Townships of , echoes this process. He places the hardening of the 45th parallel first at the Rebellions and later to the . Fear of border raids first by unorganized patriotes and then by the secret societies helped push Townshippers away from their American neighbours, who seemed to support the raids wholeheartedly. In a later article, Little argues that the Fenian raids helped create bordered land out of the Eastern Townships. Newspapers in the Eastern Townships, unlike others in 13

With such a geographically specific definition, I do not follow Tom Dunning in treating all of Upper Canada as constituting a borderland.38 By arguing that the Rebellion was essentially a proxy conflict between British or American values, Dunning ignores major British North American factors that led to Rebellion such as French-, conservative political violence, and the debate over the nature of the colonial constitution. Upper Canada can be part of a “North American community” and not a borderland stretched to cover the entire colony.39 There was a persistent Britishness that mingled and created something different, especially given the large influx of British immigration after 1828.40 However, Dunning usefully points to how “republican borderlanders[’]” desire “to create a regional republican community and to be identified

British North America, took a strong pro-Union stance. Yet the aftermath of the Civil War saw a growing gulf between the Eastern Townships’ Stanstead Journal and papers over the renewal of the reciprocity agreement and the Fenian Raids. The border did harden with the Rebellion as Americans complained of increased harassment when crossing. New York State Library, John Ellis Wool Papers, Box 27, Folder 2 “Affidavits of Vermont residents (U.S. citizens), 1838 re: problems encountered upon crossing the Canadian Border.” In this respect, I depart from past borderlands history that reinforces a state-centred teleology of when a borderland became a ‘bordered land’ while still being mindful of what Hämäläinen and Truett describe as respect for the temporal evolution of a borderland. See Alan Taylor, The Civil : American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 837-838. J. I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812-1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 102-103. Little, “From Borderlands to Bordered Land: Reactions in the Eastern Townships Press to the American Civil War and the Threat of Fenian Invasion” Histoire sociale/Social History 45, no. 89 (2012): 1-24. Hämäläinen and Truett, 344. I subscribe to the notion, as elaborated by Bukowczyk, that borders are “differentially permeable” to different types of labour, capital, and so on. Bukowczyk, 180. 38 Tom Dunning, “The Canadian Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 as a Borderland War: A Retrospective,” Ontario History 101, no. 2 (2009): 132. I also, therefore, do not follow the similar contention advanced by Roger Gibbins. Roger Gibbins, Canada as a Borderlands Society, 2. 39 Jane Errington, The Lion, the and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, [1987] 2012). 40 Ibid.,189. Errington notes Hartwell Bowsfield’s observation that Upper Canadians sought to shape a community “able to move within its own orbit, separate from the United States, separate but not estranged from the imperial mother,” proclaiming loyalty to the British crown while recognizing Upper Canada’s “place as a new North American community in which conditions [...] would necessarily and shape its attitudes.” Hartwell Bowsfield, Upper Canada in the 1820’s: The Development of Political Consciousness.” (PhD dissertation. University of Toronto, 1976) quoted in Errington, Ibid. Also see S. F. Wise and Robert Craig Brown, Canada Views the United States: Nineteenth Century Political Attitudes (Seattle University of Washington Press, 1982). 14

as residents of this borderland as well as citizens of the United States.” For Dunning, this was accomplished through the patriot secret society, the Patriot Hunters, and through later patriot life writings.41 Dunning also uses primarily American writings from the

Battle of the Windmill to argue for an Upper Canadian republican community.42 While

Dunning may overstate the case for this particular community, this conception of a regional republican community provides a useful way of understanding the patriot press community, begun in the Canadas, but developed in exile in the United States. I move toward a more clearly defined idea of “republican borderlanders” by relying on the patriot press: its community of patriot editors and how it worked to define such a community, first in the Canadas and then in the United States, but always centred on and concerned with the border.

The focus on the border ties both the Canadas and the pre and post 1837-38 periods together, and allows the dissertation to connect events in Upper and Lower

Canada and the United States. In his 1995 article calling for a reconsideration of the

Rebellion, Allan Greer characterized scholarship on it as “a particularly advanced case of historiographical apartheid” with a “yawning chasm separating studies of Lower Canada and works on Upper Canada.” Both English-Canadian and French-Canadian historiography on the Rebellion had “been pursuing different issues using different methods and, on the whole, ignoring one another.”43 This has manifested itself in

41 Dunning, 140. While Dunning uses this term, I refer to this organization as the Hunters’ Lodges. 42 Dunning, passim. 43 Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 6–7. As Greer notes, the Canadian Historical Association reflected this historiographic ‘two solitudes’ by its publication of separate CHA booklets on the Lower and Upper Canadian Rebellions. See Colin Read, “The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Association Historical Booklet 46 (1988) and Jean-Paul Bernard, “The Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 in Lower Canada,” Canadian Historical Association Booklet 55 (1996). 15

different structures underlining the Rebellion. In Lower Canada much of the historical focus had centred on a nationalist interpretation.44 In Upper Canada, the focus has been on a compendium of grievances building into Rebellion, dubbed by historian Colin Read the “Lindsey thesis” in reference to its first proponent, .45 Because of this divide in the historiography, Read, in the Historical Atlas of Canada plate on the

Rebellion, noted that “To the extent that the rebels came together to improve their lot, their movements were ‘associational’ and modern in character.” Whereas, in Lower

Canada, “to the extent that it pitted francophone against anglophone[,] the rebellion was

‘communal’ and pre-modern in character.”46 When one centers one’s work on the press and voluntary organizing, the associational nature of the entire rebellion project comes into view.47 More recently Michel Ducharme has convincingly bridged that “yawning

44 Dominating the debate was the work of the influential scholar Lionel Groulx, who depicted the rebellion as “un épisode tragique dans la longue lutte d’un petit peuple pour un achèvement de ses institutions politiques et pour la conquête de ses essentielles libertés.” Lionel Groulx, Histoire du Canada français depuis la découverte, tome III (Montreal: Fides,1960), 177. Within the nationalist debate, there remained the question of whether national liberation “s’agit de la libération de tous les coloniaux du Bas-Canada de la sujétion à la Grande Bretagne ou de celle des « Canadiens » (Canadiens français) de l’hégémonie des Britanniques.” Jean-Paul Bernard, Les Rébellions de 1837-1838 : les patriotes du Bas-Canada dans la mémoire collective et chez les historiens (Montréal : Boréal Express, 1983), 340. 45 Grievances ran from the profound to the trivial and from constitutional to economic issues. Over the years leading up to 1837, grievance upon grievance was accumulated against the government by the citizens of Upper Canada. This eventually reached the point that exasperated citizens sought to achieve through the force of arms what they had not been able to secure through peaceful means. Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837–8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982), 4. The Lindsey thesis also includes a belief that , the leader of the Rebellion in Upper Canada, was also the leader of the reform movement in Upper Canada. See also Read, “The Rebellion of 1837.” 46 Colin Read, “Unrest in the Canadas,” in R. Louis Gentilcore, Historical Atlas of Canada Volume 2: The Land Transformed, 1800–1891 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), Plate 23. Also note that Read divides “Rebel origins” and “Rebel occupations” by Lower Canada 1837-8 and 1838-9 and Upper Canada “Mackenzie” and “Duncombe.” In Greer’s view, writing in 1995, it was through these divisions that “these teleological modes of explanation continue to resound down to the present day.” Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 4. 47 This is not to deny the role of ethnicity or nationalism in the Lower Canadian conflict; rather, the conflict was more associational in nature because, as other scholars have noted, ethnicity and nationalism were instrumentalized in the Rebellion in Lower Canada rather than instrumental. For his part, historian Fernand Ouellette asserts that mass participation of habitants in insurrection was exclusively the result of manipulation by the bourgeois patriote leadership. Ouellette elaborates that those instigating the 16

chasm” between Lower and Upper Canada, as Colin Coates notes, “by emphasizing how in both colonies republican thinkers and their constitutionalist opponents drew from the same ideological inspirations.”48 Studying order can be another bridge. This thesis attempts a balance between the two Canadas. However, given the emphasis on the press,

Upper Canada receives more attention than the habitants of the district of Montreal due to the location of papers and comparative literacy rates.49

In addition the division between the Canadas, the heavily American phase of late

December 1837 to October 1838 has been often hived into a separate conflict. What to contemporaries was one massive upheaval with different moving parts has become dispersed into different iterations. We now have Colin Read’s “Duncombe Rising,”

Ronald Stagg’s “Yonge Street Rebellion,” the 1837 Rebellion in Lower Canada, the

Patriot War, and the 1838 Rebellion in Lower Canada.50 However, even a cursory

Rebellion—“les professions libéral”—achieved this by “appuyant leur effort sur la préservation des anciennes structures institutionnelles élevées au rangs de valeurs nationales.” (Ouellette in Bernard, 228) Ouellette is making two arguments: first, it was old power structures that gave patriotes their privilege not nationalism; and second, those privileged institutions were elevated in national garb so as to gain support from the habitants. From his analysis, Greer sees the habitants as political as the patriote bourgeois leadership and truly interested in democracy. Greer further asserts that the conflict in Lower Canada was not a nationalist struggle and that “the lines of conflict were fundamentally political and incidentally ethnic.” In Greer’s view, “when political conflict over the shape of the Lower Canadian state reached a revolutionary crisis,[...] language and national origin came often to serve as rough and ready indications of political allegiance.”47 Greer, Patriots and the People, 188. 48 For the use of “yawning chasm” see Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 6; Colin M. Coates, “Liberty in Space and Time: A Commentary on Ducharme,” in “Macdonald Roundtable,” Canadian Historical Review, 94 no. 1 (2013): 81. 49 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 133. Michel Verrette, “L’alphabétisation de la population de la ville de Québec de 1750 à 1849,” Revue d’histoire de l’Améreique Française, 39, no. 1 (1985): 61-75. Literacy among francophones was 37.7 percent and this was in an urban area. The place of the press also positions Montreal in a greater prominence then the rural surrounding parishes. Alan Greer also notes that there existed “a cleavage” between the cities and the areas of rural agitation. Allan Greer, “La dimension ville- campagne de l’insurrection de 1837,” in Société villageoises et rapports ville-campagnes au Québec et dans la France de l’ouest XVIIe – XXe siècles, ed. François Lebrun and Normand Seguin (Trois Rivières: Centre de Recherche en études Québécoise, 1985), 231. 50 Read, Duncombe Rising. Ronald Stagg, “The Yonge Street Rebellion of 1837: An Examination of the Social Background and a Re-assessment of the Events,” (PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1976). Gilles Laporte, Brève histoire des patriotes (Quebec: Septentrion, 2015). See as well the separate Canadian 17

overview of only the military actions between 1837 and 1838 demonstrates how this is an arbitrary segmentation. 51 Promising new scholarship has brought the place of the United

States and the role of the border into focus with either Lower or Upper Canada and scholars are working towards finally uniting the Rebellion in Lower Canada, Upper

Canada, and the United States.52 This dissertation joins that effort.

Historical Association Booklets for the Rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada and for dividing events in Lower Canada into two Rebellions. Read, “Rebellion in Upper Canada” and Bernand “Rebellions in Lower Canada;” Richards, “Texas Moment,” draws a distinction between the experiences in Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1837 (22) and separates the from the rebellion in Lower Canada in 1838 (143-144). For the continuation of the “Patriot War” into the most recent literature see Albert Schrauwers, “Tilting at Windmills: The Utopian Socialist Roots of the Patriot War, 1838–1839,” Labour/Le travail 79 (2017): 53–80. 51 The first military engagement of the Rebellion was between British troops sent out from Montreal into the Richelieu valley and local opposition at the Battle of St. Denis on November 23, 1837, at which the British were defeated. The British won the next engagement at St. Charles on November 28. On December 4, hearing news of victories in Lower Canada, anti-government forces began to assemble north of Toronto. In turn, news of the rising at Toronto reached western Upper Canada on December 6 or 7 and opposition leaders there began to muster . The rebels north of Toronto were decisively defeated and dispersed on December 8. However, mustering continued in western Upper Canada until December 13 when, with a large force loyal to the administration descending upon them, the rebels dispersed. Also on December 13, exiles from the initial stages of the Rebellion, who had made safe haven in Buffalo, together with American supporters, moved to occupy —part of Upper Canada—in the . On December 14, forces loyal to the government defeated the rebels north of Montreal at Saint- Eustache. Around two weeks later, on December 29, forces loyal to the British administration burned the U.S. steamer Caroline, which was supplying the rebels on Navy Island. This action represented a significant international incident in the eyes of U.S. authorities and enflamed American public opinion. From early January 1838 to June 1838, Lower and Upper Canada experienced a series of border raids from exiles and their supporters. Major fighting broke out again in November of that year. Coordinated risings in a number of regions in southern Lower Canada began the night of November 3, coupled with an invasion by exiles and sympathisers from the United States. Sporadic fighting followed, mostly between that invasion force and local loyal to the British administration between November 6 and 9. These armed insurrectionary groups were either defeated by British forces or disbanded when faced with the latter’s imminent arrival. The last camp of these armed groups dispersed on November 13. In possible loose coordination with some of those organizing revolts in Lower Canada, patriots launched a major invasion of Upper Canada by occupying and holding the village of Newport and its windmill, east of Prescott, between November 12 and 18. This group was defeated; those members who did not flee to the U.S. were tried by authorities. December 4, 1838 saw the last military engagement when exiles and sympathisers crossed the border in an unsuccessful attack on Windsor, Upper Canada. 52 For new works that offer a good analysis see: Ducharme, Le concept de la liberté (for between Upper and Lower Canada); Dunning, “Canadian Rebellion as Borderlands War;” Richards, “Texas Moment,” (for Upper Canada and the U.S.); Harvey, Printemps, Little, Loyalties in Conflict (for Lower Canada and the U.S.). Very recent work has taken Lower Canada, Upper Canada, and the United States together. See Mauduit, “Vrais républicains” and Maxime Dagenais, “‘[T]hose who had money were opposed to us, and those who were our friends were not the moneyed class.’ Philadelphia and the 1837-38 Canadian Rebellions.” American Review of Canadian Studies 48, no. 1 (2017): 1–18. 18

Tying together events in both the Canadas and the United States allows an examination of the Rebellion beyond national borders. Including constitutionalist interlocutors in the Canadas, but especially in Upper Canada, with continued patriot press activity in the United States after late 1837, I show, contrary to other historians, that after

November 1837 there was a continuing debate in the press over ideas of republicanism and monarchy, rather than the end of patriot voices in the public sphere.53 Therefore, I argue that the passing of information and arguments across the border resulted in the formation of a new, particular, borderlands public sphere debating the Rebellion. This transborder debate on the Rebellion is another instance of how the Rebellion both transcended and hinged on the border and points to the ways in which the border influenced the rhetoric around the Rebellion.

My third major argument is that this particular focus on the border, the press, and voluntary organizing alters how historians analyze the significance of the Rebellion in the

United States. There are a number of ramifications to reinterpreting the Rebellion in the

United States. First, I argue that a study of the Rebellion in exile should shift from a focus on battles and secret societies towards taking into account multiple attempts at patriot organizing and the importance of the patriot press. With such a shift we gain a fuller understanding of the diversity of patriot tactics and voices after the initial failure of rebellion and the flight into exile.54 Second, while referencing American assistance to the

53 See Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2000), 193 and Yvan Lamond, Hisoire Sociale des Idées au Québec, Tome 1, 1760 –1896 (Ville Saint-Laurent: Fides, 2000), 247. 54 Work on the Rebellion in the United States has focused on and continues to centre around the secret society, the Hunters’ Lodges. Almost every work on the Rebellion and the United States could be cited within this context. For monograph examples of this theme, see Edwin C. Guillet, The Lives and Times of the Patriot Hunters: An Account of the Rebellion in Upper Canada, 1837-1838 and of the Patriot Agitation 19

Rebellion, current U.S. literature emphasizes filibustering as an attempt at territorial expansion and focusses on mid-century expeditions to Central and South America rather than on filibustering’s full geographic and temporal reach.55 There have been some promising investigations into the significance of the Rebellion to filibustering or the idea of breakaway republican alternatives for those in the United States.56 However, what about the Canadian view and opinion on these U.S. actions? A fuller examination of the

Canadian Rebellion as related to filibustering can uncover how patriots viewed the

United States as an exporter of republicanism and a haven for revolutionaries. Patriots cast the United States in a broader of international revolutionary assistance in the United States 1837-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); Albert B. Corey, The 1830- 1842 Crisis in Canadian-American Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1941); and Oscar A. Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters: Liberation of Canadian Provinces from British Thraldom (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956). For more recent examples, see Graves, Guns Across the River and Shaun J. McLaughlin, The Patriot War Along the New York-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2012). There are two unfortunate implications of having the Hunters’ Lodges stand in for broader organizing efforts in the United States It isolates the U.S. from continued organizing that occurred in Lower Canada. For example, it was derivatives of ritual from the secret Frères Chasseurs that spread around Lower Canada. In making the Hunters the centre of the ‘American patriot universe,’ other organizing inevitably is analyzed in relation to them. Patriots such as Mackenzie, not invited or choosing not to take part in the Hunters’ Lodges, are consequently marginalized. See Graves, Guns Across the River, 20, 58; Thomas Richards, “Texas Moment,” 174. The exciting new work on the economic thought of patriots, especially in exile, and the growing body of work on the Rebellion and its implications for the United States, in many instances continues in this regard. See Albert Schrauwers, “Tilting at Windmills: The Utopian Socialist Roots of the Patriot War, 1838–1839,” Labour/Le Travail 79 (2017): 53–80. 55 Temporally, filibustering is seen as extending from Aaron Burr to the Civil War. However, the major focus by historians has been on the last period, 1850-1860. While works allude to expeditions to the west and to British North America, these are never analyzed to the same extent as later, southern expeditions. They also receive short shrift even in works that propose a broad synthesis of filibustering from the eighteenth century and in all places. See Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) and Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005) In the Canadian context, the focus of these invasions has been within a legal history of the borderlands. See Kenneth R. Stevens, Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in Anglo- American-Canadian relations, 1837-1842. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1989); Patrick Lacroix, “Choosing Peace and Order: National Security and Sovereignty in a North American Borderland, 1837–42,” International History Review 38, no. 5 (2016): 943-960; and Bradley Miller, Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 56 See Bonthius. This has been done recently both with great nuance and an understanding of the Rebellion in the Canadas, Richards, “Texas Moment,” and with a very limited understanding of the Rebellion in the Canadas and its literature, Comegna, “Dupes of Hope Forever.” 20

beyond the Atlantic Revolutions to include recent uprisings and revolutions in Greece,

Poland, and Texas. Certain scholars have examined the United States as playing such a role in the Irish context.57 Existing filibustering literature has overlooked the perspective of those non-US revolutionaries who invited U.S. assistance and filibustering as tapping into that tradition.58

To make these arguments, I begin my study by situating it in the newly heated rhetoric in the press in the aftermath of the passage of the Ninety-Two Resolutions by the

Lower Canadian House of Assembly in 1834. In Chapter 2, I examine the subsequent turn by constitutionalists and patriots toward self-organizing along militarized lines and particularly the role of the press in helping to organize them. It is the coverage and promotion of such organizations in the press that initiated a challenge to the existing state order. The drive to found new political societies rested on a belief in voluntary organizing. The success or failure of these political associations was judged by the values and benchmarks of voluntarism. Those values extended towards militarized organizing first among the Lower Canadian constitutionalists with the formation of the British Rifle

Corps in 1835. I examine the extent to which other constitutionalist organizations as reported in the press could be such a vehicle for constitutionalists. In Upper Canada, while not establishing a new order, the partisan activities of the Orange Lodge caused

57 Taylor cites the case of Irish rebels of 1798 who negotiated passage to the United States in 1803. Taylor, War of 1812, 80–81. See also Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) and David Noel Doyle, Ireland, Irishmen and Revolutionary America, 1760-1820 (Dublin and Cork: The Mercer Press, 1981). 58 As an example, Nicaraguan liberals invited American filibusterer William Walker to help their Democratic Party regain power. However, they have not received the same degree of attention in the literature as Walker and his compatriots. Although not a direct parallel with the Nicaraguan liberals, patriot refugees demanded assistance from United States citizens. Luciano Baracco, Nicaragua: The Imagining of a Nation from Nineteenth-Century Liberals to Twentieth-Century Sandinistas (New York: Algora, 2005), 33. 21

concerns among patriots about the propriety of secret “oath bound” associations that were reflected later, as discussed in Chapter 5, when patriots contemplated secret organizing themselves while in exile. I argue that militarized organizing by constitutionalists was nonetheless limited because they could not develop a new order outside state sanction without being branded as disloyal. I then examine the new organizations created by patriots and how their organizing constituted the beginnings of an attempt at a new form of order. I end with the outbreak of insurrection, the arrest and flight of patriot figures, and the closing of patriot papers in the Canadas as halting the role of the press in such organizing in November 1837. Rather than an episode of disorder, I argue that these instances of voluntary associating show how the Rebellion was an episode in both patriots and constitutionalists exercising order. Therefore, we must look for attempts to make order beyond the initiatives of the habitants in the Montreal hinterland studied so ably by Greer. The dichotomy between deliberative (ordered) and armed (disordered) organizing is not as clear as some have argued.59

Chapter 3 charts the rise of a new patriot press that begins in the Canadas in 1836 and was crucial to these voluntary associations. To examine the role of the patriot press in forming a new order, I focus not on the language of debate but on the press itself. Who were the editors? What did they say about other patriot papers and what were not patriot papers? When and where were these patriot papers established? What did these papers promise to do? This developing patriot press was defined by its commitment to republicanism, anti-, and immediate independence for the Canadas from

59 McNairn, Capacity to Judge. Wilton, Popular Politics; Wilton, “Lawless law: Conservative Political Violence in Upper Canada,” Law and History Review 13, no. 1 (1995): 111-136; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes. 22

British control. As part of centring the Rebellion on the border, I follow the press into exile after 1837 and examine the values and ideas around which it was reconstituted until the folding of the last patriot papers in 1842. I argue that, rather than terminating radical press voices, the Rebellion sent the patriot press into exile thereby perpetuating the conflict in print from the pre-Rebellion period touched on in Chapter 2. In this way, the

Rebellion transcended the border. In the Canadas, the patriot press constituted an implicit rhetorical borderland given its open embrace of U.S. republicanism. After it was forced into exile, the patriot press became an explicitly geographic borderland: while located in the United States it was distinct from both the press in the Canadas and the press in the

United States although in dialogue with both.

I also outline the new radical politics of the patriot editorial community in exile.

This new radicalism demonstrates one element of patriots’ changing ideas of order with the move to the United States. In this case, we can see a shift from traditions of the

Atlantic revolutions in the Canadas pre ’37 to newer and more radical revolutionary ideas that prefigure what was to come in 1848.60 Miles Taylor has argued for a place for the

British Empire in the Revolutions of 1848.61 As well, other movements associated with

1848 span the period of study. 1837 saw the rise of the Chartist movement in Britain and

Chartists and Canadian reformers maintained an active connection.62 Ducharme has argued convincingly for the Atlantic revolutionary heritage with his study terminating in

1837. Durcharme’s stated hesitation for extending the study to 1848 was to avoid the

60 Louis-Georges Harvey places the patriote tradition in Lower Canada in the vein of the “Spring of Nations,” which begin with the revolutions of 1830. Harvey, Printemps, 10. 61 Miles Taylor, “The 1848 Revolutions and the ” Past and Present 166 (2000): 146-180. 62 For a contemporary history of Chartism, see R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement (London: Merlin Press, [1854, 1894] 1976); see also Schrauwers, In Union there is Strength. 23

Revolutions of 1848 and risk jeopardizing the Atlantic framework of the study. The radical transition created by the flight across the border could offer a possible solution to this conundrum.63 Seeing this radicalism as prefiguring 1848 also provides another link for the Canadas in Taylor’s argument which mentions instead the later Rebellion Losses controversy and the annexation debate.64 This radicalism prefigures the Rebellion as part of the new wave of revolutions in 1848 rather than only the close of the eighteenth- century Atlantic revolutions. The radicalism of the patriot press in exile—including abolitionism—also points to how the patriots complicate traditional understandings of filibustering as a movement by pro-slavery southern expansionists. Here, filibustering was done by northern radicals.

Staying with the patriot press in exile in Chapter 4, I turn to examine the language of the patriot press as it relates to understandings of order. I begin with the first papers that developed as early as January 1838. I use the rhetoric in the patriot press in exile to investigate how the patriot press tried to order and set boundaries around the movement despite the upheaval of military defeat and exile in 1837. The language of the patriot press in exile shows five key values that helped define the community in exile. First, the patriot press continued to believe in the benefits of organizing along voluntary lines despite failed uprisings and the use of force. Second, the patriot press in exile developed a self-perception of patriots as victims who “suffered” for their political beliefs. Third, the perception that this victimization included mistreatment by racialized peoples

63 Ducharme, “New Perspectives on the Concept of Liberty in Canada,” in “Macdonald Roundtable,” Canadian Historical Review, 94 no. 1 (2013): 108. In her contribution, E.A Heaman notes the problems of patriots’ used Jacksonian rhetoric attacking privilege pose for the place of the Rebellion in the Atlantic Revolutions. Heaman, “Discussion of Ducharme’s Le concept de liberté,” in “Macdonald Roundtable,” Canadian Historical Review, 94 no. 1 (2013): 94. 64 Taylor, “1848 Revolutions,” 163. 24

constructed implicit racial boundaries for the community. Fourth, the fraternal language used by patriots to describe their suffering speaks to the place of masculine language in also defining the boundaries of the patriot movement. Both the third and fourth points tie into the rhetoric examined in Chapter 2. Fifth, the patriot press in exile positioned itself as part of a revolutionary tradition. The characterization of patriots as suffering and part of a revolutionary tradition emphasized an understanding of the United States as a of and sanctuary for revolutionaries. The emphasis on certain revolutions and not others points, as does Chapter 3, to a change from purely an Atlantic revolutionary tradition and offers a non-American understanding of support for filibustering. In Chapter

3, I note how patriot voices in the press were not silenced by the outbreak of rebellious violence. Chapter 4 demonstrates that the patriot press continued its conflict with constitutionalist papers in the Canadas based on the patriot press’s shared values, creating a public sphere that traversed but was also defined by the border. The debates between constitutionalists and patriots now hinged on the border. Such developments show the importance of the border to the Rebellion and the possibilities of transnational public spheres.

From examining the language in the patriot press in exile in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 moves to interrogate how the patriot press in exile constructed order in voluntary organizing, returning to the topic of Chapter 2, but examines that phenomenon after

November 1837. The patriot press perpetuated the voluntary organizing seen in Chapter 2 and made concrete the rhetoric of voluntarism examined in Chapter 4. This community is evident despite the press’s symbiotic relationship with patriot military organizers even when such organizing was necessarily done in secret. In fact, the press used secrecy as a

25

further way to define a patriot community and thus chapter 5 carries on the argument of chapters 3 and 4 around how the patriot press established order and defined its boundaries in exile. Due to exile, the patriot press did have the added challenges posed by defining a movement concerned with the Canadas but based in the United States. This brought questions concerning the place of national origin to the fore and the issue of whether women’s participation would be more in line with existing mores in the Canadas or the

United States.

In the conclusion, I posit that the memoirs of patriots transported to Van

Diemen’s Land in 1838 and 1839 constitute the last gasp of the patriot press and patriot public sphere. Here, as Tom Dunning as explained for patriot veterans of the Battle of the Windmill, patriots were working to imagine an alternative in their memoirs. Attempts at community-formation in print lasted longer than patriot organizations.65

As its principal subject, the research corpus of my dissertation is the “patriot press.” This is composed of newspapers committed to republicanism in the Canadas, opposed to monarchy, and who believed in immediate independence for the Canadas

65 An exception might be the Société Saint Jean-Baptiste. When examining patriot alternatives in print, those patriots transported to Van Diemen’s Land and their memoirs have received disproportionate attention compared to the patriot press. See Jack Cahill, Forgotten Patriots: Canadian Prisoners on ’s Convict Shores (Toronto: R. Bass Studio, 1998); Marc L. Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism” Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1997), 33-69; Bevery Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials, and Transportation to of Lower Canadian Prisoners after the 1838 Rebellion (Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and Dundurn Press, 1995); Casandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839–1850 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002); Tony Moore, Death or Liberty: Rebel Exiles in Australia (Millers Point, Australia: Murdoch Books, 2010); and Tom Dunning, “The Adventures of the Patriot Hunters at the Windmill: Memory Place and Virtue” Canadian Review of American Studies 29 no.1 (1999): 129-141; as well as the contributions by Terry Patterson, Ian Hunddey, Norm Howeard, and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart in a special issue on the Rebellion in Upper Canada in Australasian Canadian Studies 29, no. 1-2 (2011). For recent work tying together the Rebellion and Australian history see Benjamin T. Jones, Republicanism and : The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014). 26

from British control. The press was important to patriot voluntary organizing, so much so that Mackenzie brought a portable press to the major reform meetings north of Toronto in

November 1837 and printed a handbill on it.66 Other evidence points to the press even being a driver for armed insurrection. In the Home District, Juliana Stabile notes that a number of arrested rebels claimed to have taken up arms based on reading certain newspapers, especially Mackenzie’s.67 At the Battle of the Windmill, pro-patriot news and newspapers may have had a direct influence on the course of the battle. When, under the cover of darkness, a ship crossed from Ogdensburg, New York to the Windmill to transport patriots back to the United States, one of those who came over stated “that reinforcements would come over and read newspapers relating to the Patriot battles” to the commander, Nils Von Shoultz. Rather than escape in the night, the information contradicted the initial intent of the crossing and in the confusion the patriots stayed.68

Scholars have alluded to the importance of the press to the patriot organizing and the Rebellion. Most work, however, has divided its focus between newspapers in the

Canadas and in exile in the United States.69 This dissertation sees the press as important

66 John Charles Dent, The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion, Volume 2 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1885), 18; J. J. Talman, The Printing Presses of William Lyon Mackenzie, prior to 1837,” Canadian Historical Review 18 no. 4 (1937): 418. Charles Lindsey, The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie, Volume 2 (Toronto: P. R. Randall, 1862), 344. 67 Stabile, “Toronto Newspapers,” 395. 68 Affidavit of Stephen Smith Wright of Denmark, Lewis County, NY. Preston King/Simeon Smith Papers Box 2 Folder F, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY. Possibly some wounded patriots fled, although it is unclear from the affidavits. Richards discusses this incident in more detail and has a fuller discussion on Preston King and the patriots. Richards, “Texas Moment” 175-176, 199-201. Patriot in exile and those living along the border learned of developments in the Rebellion from the press and discussed receiving such news in their letters. See for example Albany Institute of History and Art, Erastus Corning Papers, Box 5, Folder 20, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan to Erastus Corning, 6 March 1838; Detroit Public Library, Burton Historical Collection, Mary Snyder Papers, Mary Snyder to Solomon Snyder, 5 March 1838. 69 See Read and Stagg, Rebellion of 1837, Harvey Printemps, Stabile, and Ducharme Concept de la liberté, for the importance of the pre-Rebellion period. See Maduit for the importance of the press post-Rebellion. While Kenny discusses exile papers, he does not see them as that influential. For the importance of U.S. 27

throughout the period and beyond the geographic divide created by the violence of

November-December 1837.

Defining a patriot press before the outbreak of Rebellion in November 1837 has not been done. What historiography that does exist has until very recently been partitioned between Lower and Upper Canada.70 For Lower Canada, Louis-Georges

Harvey singles out the Minerve and Vindicator as “les principaux outils de propaganda du parti” and Yvan Lamonde notes that the editor of the Canadien was the focal point of the attack of the Vindidator, Minerve, and Libéral/Liberal.71 For Upper Canada, scholars have noted William Lyon Mackenzie as the most radical Upper Canadian reformer and his Constitution as one of the most radical prints of Upper Canada.72 However, there is also a tendency to place the Constitution either with other radical reform prints or, more

papers after the outbreak of violence in November 1837, see Maxime Dagenais, “‘[T]hose who had money were opposed to us, and those who were our friends were not the moneyed class.’ Philadelphia and the 1837-38 Canadian Rebellions,” American Review of Canadian Studies 48 (2017); Arthur L. Johnson, “The New York State Press and the Canadian Rebellions” American Review of Canadian Studies 14 no. 3 (1984), 279-290.; Jean-Paul Bernard, “Vermonters and the Lower Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838” Vermont History, 58 no. 4 (1990), 250-263. An exception to the Canadas-US divide in the coverage of patriot papers is the work of Merrill and Linda Distad. Regrettably only a very brief narrative list is provided. In addition, of the newspapers of exiled editors, only those of Mackenzie are covered. See N. Merrill Distad with Linda M. Distad, “Canada” in Periodicals of Queen Victoria’s Empire: An Exploration J. Don Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 82-83. Jacques Monet covers both Duvernay both before and after exile. However, he is quite dismissive of and his papers either before and after exile. See Jacques Monet, The Last Cannon Shot: A Study of French-Canadian Nationalism 1837-1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 15. See also Aurélio Ayala and Françoise Le Jeune who focus on the coverage of the Rebellion in French press. Aurélio Ayala and Françoise Le Jeune, Les rebellions canadiennes de 1837 et 1838 vues de Paris (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011). 70 There are exceptions. For example, Kesterton provides a long list of papers deemed “reform” enumerating papers from across British North America including the Minerve and the Vindicator but not the Constitution. Wilfrid H. Kesterton, A History of in Canada (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1984), 14. 71 Harvey, Printemps, 121. Yvan Lamonde. Histoire Social des Idées au Québec, 1760-1896 (Montréal: Fides, 2000), 238. 72 Fetherling singles out the Constitution from the Correspondent and Advocate for being in the “vanguard” of formatting rather than republicanism. Douglas Fetherling, The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990), 21. 28

often, to conflate all of Mackenzie’s papers.73 Recently, Michel Ducharme has recognized the special nature of the Vindicator, Minerve, and Constitution as he places the three together as “journaux patriotes et radicaux.”74 It is these three papers in the

Canadas that I characterize as the first of the patriot press.

To define the patriot press once in the United States is clearer as previous historians have recognized elements of the patriot press community in the United States.

However, coverage in the literature that identifies anything resembling a coherent patriot press community has been exceedingly limited. Individual papers have been mentioned by scholars in biographies, local press histories, or thematic works not related to the

Rebellion. There have been a number of scholarly biographies of refugees involved in newspapers, the most extensive of which is Lillian Gates’s biography of Mackenzie after the Rebellion.75 Patriot papers appear in local press histories as early as the nineteenth century.76 Finally, certain papers appear in more global works on topics as diverse as

American un-belief, early socialism, or ethnic communities.77 None of these works examine these newspapers as part of a pattern, as part of a broader community, or as part of a history that begins across the border in the Canadas. The

73 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 206. Chris Raible, W. L. Mackenzie, Printer: His Newspapers and His Presses (Toronto: Mackenzie House, Toronto Historical Board, 1989). J. J. Talman, “The Printing Presses of William Lyon Mackenzie”: 414-418. 74 Ducharme, Le concept de la liberté, 230. 75 See Lillian F. Gates, After the Rebellion: The Later Years of William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996); Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB; Colin Frederick Read, “Edward Alexander Theller,” DCB; Jack Verney, O’Callaghan: The Making and Unmaking of a Rebel (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). 76 Malcolm Daggett, “Vermont’s First French Newspaper,” Vermont History 24, no. 2 (1956): 132-138. See also for example Frederick Follett, History of the Press of (Rochester: Jerome & Brother, 1847). 77 Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825-1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); A. E. Bestor, “Albert Brisbane, Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840’s,” New York History 28 (1947), 128-158; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City: 1825-1863 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994). 29

patriot press in the United States was distinct from American papers that expressed sympathy for the patriot cause. Sympathy in the American press for the patriots was widespread in the initial phases of late 1837. However, American public opinion towards the patriots could change drastically and therefore alter who in the American press was sympathetic to the patriots.78 For example, Oscar A. Kinchen provides a list of five sympathetic papers, although he does not state why they were singled out for their sympathy.79 In contrast, Mackenzie provides a contemporary perspective of twenty four

“public journals friendly to Canadian emancipation” that include nine non- patriot examples. Of the rest, only two are mentioned by Kinchen and Mackenzie does not list one of the papers which Kinchen does.80

There are three works that identify the phenomenon of the patriot press in the

U.S., that is, that there was a collection of multiple papers in the United States solely dedicated to republicanism, anti-monarchism, and the immediate freedom of the Canadas from British control. Two are in surveys of other topics. Historian Tony Moore, in his work on political exiles in Australia, notes that in the aftermath of the Rebellion there was a “partisan patriot press” that worked “to support the movement for intervention” in

78 On the changing nature of American public opinion towards the patriots see Corey, Crisis of 1830-1842, Chapter 6; Samuel Watson, “ Officers Fight the ‘Patriot War’: Responses to Filibustering on the Canadian Border, 1837-1839” Journal of the Early Republic 18, no. 3 (1998): 498, Johnson, “New York State Press and the Canadian Rebellions;” Dagenais, “A ‘Canadian Revolution’ in Philadelphia”; Jean-Paul Bernard, “Vermonters and the Lower Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838,” Vermont History 58, no. 4 (1990): 250-263. John Duffy and Nicholas Muller, “The Great Wolf Hunt: The Popular Response in Vermont to the ‘Patriote’ Uprising of 1837” Journal of American Studies 8, no. 2 (1974): 153-169. 79 Kinchen lists the Watertown Jeffersonian, the Detroit Morning Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Buffalo Daily Mercury, and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Kinchen, 20-21. 80 Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 p260 c2. Also reprinted in the , January 8 1839 p2 c1-2. 30

the Canadas. For this community, he lists three papers but does not give reasons for the choice.81

Kinchen, in his monograph on the Hunters’ Lodges, goes further by acknowledging that there were newspapers “identified with the movement” that were distinct from sympathetic American papers. Kinchen also provides a more exhaustive lists of six: the Canadian Patriot, Freeman’s Advocate, Lewiston Telegraph, Bald Eagle,

Oswego Bulletin, and the Buffalonian as those papers “apparently launched for no other purpose than the promotion of the Patriot cause.”82 Kinchen misses a number of other papers founded for that purpose in the United States and the list is the extent of his discussion. Also Kinchen excludes the Detroit Morning Post and the Buffalo Daily

Mercury categorizing them as only sympathetic. As will be noted in Chapter 3, contemporaries, both patriots and those opposed to them, singled out the Morning Post as being more than sympathetic. As well, Thomas Low Nichols established the patriot

Mercury after he left the Buffalonian—which Kinchen notes as patriot.83 Kinchen seems to take as the benchmark for a patriot paper that it must have been founded for the patriot cause, but this should not be used as the only metric. Some editors simply took over existing papers. Upper Canadian refugee Samuel Hart assumed editorship of the Lewiston

Telegraph, for instance, and recently established papers could pivot into being a patriot organ such as was the case with the Morning Post.

81 Tony Moore, Death or Liberty: Rebel Exiles in Australia (Millers Point, Australia: Murdoch Books, 2010), 363. Moore lists the Canadian Patriot, Freeman’s Advocate, and Bald Eagle. 82 Kinchen, 20. 83 Guy H. Salisbury, “Early History of the Press of Erie County” in Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society Volume 2 (Buffalo: Bigelow Brothers, 1879), 208. 31

Julien Mauduit also engages with patriot newspapers in his very recent thesis.

However, his focus is on exiles, their political economy, and their impact on the United

States. In his short section on the importance of the press to the patriots in exile, he provides an excellent overview of the geographic range of the agents for three patriot papers.84 Mauduit provides a more extensive list than Kinchen and another list provided by historian Stephen Kenny in an article on refugee editors.85 Kenny still provides the deepest analysis into the patriot press community. He examines the similarities and differences between the North American, the Patriote Canadien, and Mackenzie’s two papers (Gazette and Volunteer) in exile. His main thrust is the inability of these papers to rouse American support.86

I build off Kenny in four ways. First, as will be seen in Chapter 3, there were more refugee newspapermen sent into exile by the Rebellion than those mentioned by

Kenny. Second, the transition to the United States was more complex than just exiled editors and contributors. Some editors in the Canadas were pushed into exile regardless of whether they were patriot or simply reformers. As well, there were other editors in the

United States, some with deep connections to the Canadas and some with none, who joined with refugees to create the patriot press community in the United States. Third,

84 Mackenzie’s Gazette, North American, Patriote Canadien 85 Mauduit provides the most complete list to date of newspapers founded by “exiles or patriot Americans.” Unlike this study, the list includes all of the papers published by Hiram Blanchard and not just Blanchard’s Canadian Patriot. Also included in the list is the Estafette, which Mauduit describes as sympathetic to the patriot cause. However, Mauduit’s list does not include the following: Theller’s second paper (the Truth), the Canadian, the Morning Post, the Patriot’s Friend, the Patriot Express, the Budget, or the Mercury. See Mauduit, 247-255 esp. 252. 86 Stephen Kenny, “Strangers’ Sojourn: Canadian Journalists in Exile, 1831-1841 American Review of Canadian Studies 17, no. 2 (1987): 181-205. Although Kenny dates the article from 1831, the work begins in 1838. Kenny also presented on the patriot press in exile at the 1985 Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting as “The Canadian Expatriate Press in the United States, 1838–1841.” See “Unpublished Papers/Communications non-imprimées,” Historical Papers/Communications historique (1985): 237. 32

while the patriot press community failed to get the assistance from the United States it sought, the press was instrumental in sustaining the patriot movement in the United

States. The press encouraged continued fighting and organizing, as will be seen in

Chapter 5. Finally, Kenny is rightfully surprised that scholarship on Rebellion-era editors offers almost no coverage when they crossed the border: “The insistence of historians not to take the story past 1837 and across the frontier is puzzling.”87 Taking a borderlands approach, as this thesis does, answers Kenny’s call. It provides a fuller picture of the phenomenon of the patriot press community and its significance.

Finally, there is a tendency to interpret this community only in relation to the

Hunters’ Lodges. Gates cites the Freeman’s Advocate as the Hunters’ newspaper.88 In contrast, Kinchen notes that the Bald Eagle was “one of the official organs of the

Hunters’s Lodges” and Mauduit casts Samuel Underhill, its editor, as one of the intellectual leaders of the Hunters.89 Senior proffers, rather, that the North American was

“the Chasseur newspaper.”90 While there may have been overlap in editors and readership, the patriot press community was more than simply an appendage of one of the many groups founded in the United States to invade the Canadas or promote Canadian independence.

In addition to the patriot press, I examine two other sets of papers. First are constitutionalist papers before 1837 that were involved in similar voluntary organizing to the patriot press. Second, I examine constitutionalist and reform papers that engaged with the patriot press after its exile. I also consult the other published work of patriots,

87 See Kenny, “Strangers Sojourn,” 199n6 and 205n153. 88 Gates, After the Rebellion,47. See also Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 253. 89 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 37; Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 303. 90 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 166. 33

including the later memoirs of participants, as well as the published broadsides of patriot and constitutionalist organizations.

Patriot papers in exile focused their arguments with only certain constitutionalist papers. There were two basic patterns in the way in which these papers raised the ire— and therefore elicited a response from—the patriot press in exile. The first pattern involved proximity. Generally, the patriot press engaged with constitutionalist newspapers that were closer to them along the borderland in the Canadas. For example,

Theller sparred with the Western Herald based across the river in Sandwich. In a similar vein, editors of papers in Vermont engaged predominately with those based in Montreal, editors in Western New York with those in Toronto and Cobourg, and papers in Buffalo,

Lockport, and Lewiston, New York with those in the Niagara region and St. Catharines.

The second pattern was that the most ardently constitutionalist papers, most notably the

Toronto Patriot and the Montreal Herald, provoked the greatest response from the patriot press.

Patriot papers regularly copied articles of the Patriot, derisively describing them as the utmost expression of constitutionalist hyperbole.91 Even when not copying articles from the Toronto Patriot, patriot papers still singled it out for rebuke. The Buffalonian included in its comments on the anniversary dinner for the burning of the Caroline a dig at the “drunken ravings” of Patriot publisher Thomas Dalton.92 The Patriot caused such great annoyance to the patriot editors that two of them carried negative coverage of

Dalton’s personal health and wellbeing. The Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian carried a

91 See for example Mackenzie’s Gazette 23 June 1838 p54 c4, 17 November 1838 p219 c4, 11 May 1839 p1 c2. See the North American p39 c4 for a copy of an article from the Toronto Examiner that discussed the character of Dalton. The North American. referred to the Examiner as “the government organ.” 92 Daily Buffalonian 7 January 1839 cited in Port of Buffalo articles: 1838–1839, Buffalo History Museum. 34

short notice that “a man by the name of Dalton” had been tarred and feathered in

Brooklyn.93 Upon Dalton suffering a stroke in March 1840, Theller published an article headlined “Tom Dalton Dead.” In it, Theller bemoaned Dalton’s reported passing for a number of reasons, including “that we would have liked to settle our account with him; but he is gone, and we are deprived of the pleasure of that we would have had with

Tommy, when Canada would have been free.”94

The other constitutionalist paper singled out by the patriots for scorn was the

Montreal Herald. It was also copied extensively by the patriot press.95 Commenting with surprise when a local paper in New Hampshire copied the Herald, the patriot North

American stated that “The name of the Montreal Herald connected with any article is sufficient to damn it in the eyes of every candid American.” In the same article, the North

American termed the Montreal Herald “that worthy organ of the party that carries death and destruction through our native land.”96

Printing in the period was laborious work. Typesetting involved the methodical work of individually selecting letters from a tray and placing them into the composing stick.97 The process for inking had become easier with the purchase of manufactured ink and the introduction of roller brayers to roll the ink on the press; however, “brayers cracked easily and became pitted.”98 Therefore, it is important to note not only what was

93 Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 2 February 1839 p3c4. 94 Spirit of ’76 26 March 1840. Dalton survived the stroke. He died with the onset of a second stroke on October 26. 1840. Ian R. Dalton, “Thomas Dalton” DCB. 95 See for example Mackenzie’s Gazette Extra, 12 November 1838 p1 c1, 3 November 1838 p205 c1, 21 July 1838 p86 c2, 14 July 1838 p77 c4. 96 North American 3 July 1839 p50 c4. 97 Raible, The Power of the Press: The Story of Early Canadian Printers and Publishers (Toronto: James Lorimer, 2007), 18. 98 Ibid., 81. 35

printed but how it was printed. Decisions to highlight text with bold or italic type, to capitalize a word, or to line a paper in black required more labour.

I have augmented this defined research corpus with surviving patriot published writings as well as personal papers of patriot printers, editors, and owners as well as local witnesses to patriot activity. As the patriot press was nearing its end, narratives and histories by patriot editors (or ex-editors) began to appear.99 The papers of these individuals provide a window into how the press community helped reorganize the patriot movement in exile. They show the decisions behind the formation of new patriot organizations and the boundaries that were set. They also show the different campaigns that the patriot press moved into, diffusing the movement for independence. Writings by other local witnesses to patriot activity (such as supporters and detractors of patriot agitation) have been sampled. Although these are useful in specific points, the focus of the dissertation is on public organizing and the patriot press. It follows that these supplemental sources have not been treated systematically.

Using the patriot press as a case study, this project investigates the relationship amongst voluntary organizing, the press, and militarized violence. The objective is to gain an understanding of the importance of the press to the Rebellion and to para-military organizing, the role of the border in defining patriot actions in the press, and the active choices the press made to build a community in exile. By the end of the patriot

99 See for example Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, A Letter to Her Majesty the British Queen . . . (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1841); E. A. Theller, Canada in 1837-38, showing by historical facts the causes of the late attempted revolution and of its failure… (Philadelphia : Henry F. Anners, 1841); Donald M’Leod, A Brief Review of the Settlements of Upper Canada by the U. E. Loyalists and Scotch Highlanders in 1783 ; and of the grievances which Compelled the Canadas to have Recourse to Arms in Defence of their Rights and Liberties . . . (: F. B. Penniman, 1841). I see the exile narratives as the heritage of, rather than a part of, the patriot press. The first of the narratives by exiles began in the years after the last patriot papers closed. Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman's Land: Written During Four Years Imprisonment for Political Offences Committed in Upper Canada (Buffalo: A. W. Wilgus, 1843). 36

movement, over twenty patriot newspapers had started. These papers worked to direct patriot organizing, support armed raids, and define a community in exile. How did such papers and organizing first develop? The next chapter begins in 1834 with the first stirrings of this new relationship between the values of voluntarism and military organizing. The initial focus of analysis is not on the patriots, but the constitutionalists instead.

37

Chapter 2

“Plans of action and not mere resolutions:” The turn to violence as an outgrowth of voluntary organizing

In the spring of 1834, at a Montreal meeting in support of government reforms, lawyer Benjamin Baubien spoke to the usefulness of gathering together in public. It was time to declare “frankly and openly our opinions of what our legislators have done [. . .] they are subject to the tribunal of public opinion; we should manifest it, being the legislators of the legislators.”1 By October 1837, those at the Great Loyal meeting—a gathering of constitutionalists in Montreal—had a different understanding of what would be useful. Speaking to the supportive crowd, a Mr. McGinn stated bluntly that “moral suasion will produce no effect, by way of convincing those deluded men of their error, we must try to convince them by the most pointed of all arguments―the point of a

British Bayonet.”2 It was no longer useful to debate. Those in error who did not agree with a given point of view had to be coerced rather than convinced through argument and evidence. Yet, we know of McGinn’s speech because it took place at a mass public meeting whose proceedings were published in the press. This indicates a contradiction. If moral suasion of opponents produced no effect and if one of the reasons for large gatherings was to influence broader public opinion, what was the new reason to associate in mass public meetings? What purpose did contemporaries believe they could still serve if violence was the appropriate action? The fact that even though moral suasion had been

1 Vindicator, 4 April 1834 p2 c5. 2 Morning Courier quoted in the Patriot 7 November 1837 p2 c1; see also Patriot 31 October 1837 p2 c5- 6In terms of public figures, this could possibly be Thomas McGinn, who would go on to become the warden of the Montreal jail. Carman Miller, “John Boston,” DCB. Emphasis in the original. 38

abandoned by some in talking to their opponents, the strategies of public meetings, resolutions, and the press became implicated in a polarized political climate where voluntary associations could be used to organize structures of violence rather than deliberation.

This shift towards non-deliberative rhetoric between 1834 and 1837 is located in the increasing political conflict that followed the passage of the Ninety-Two Resolutions, a series of demands for radical reform by the majority of the Lower Canadian House of

Assembly. Between the adoption of the Resolutions in February 1834 and the outbreak of insurrection in the fall of 1837 there was growing political polarization, calls for collective violent action, and the organization of militarized political . This chapter charts the rise of these new forms of voluntary associations in the press between

1834 and 1837. I argue that such new militaristic societies as the British Rifle Corps and the Sons of Liberty were violent, voluntary, and liberal. They associated using the tools found in other voluntary associations. They staked their claim to the public sphere on liberal rhetoric, arguing for their legitimacy based on the right to associate and the right of self-defence against attacks, real or imagined, on persons, property, and individual rights. Yet these associations pushed the boundaries of what liberal voluntary associations had done. Their ultimate goal of organizing a quasi-military force challenged the claim to a monopoly on the use of force by the state. In organizing militarily, these associations claimed that if debate around liberal rights had long become extra parliamentary so too could their armed defence.

Through their formation, these militarized societies represented not only a challenge to the existing state order but also an attempt by patriots and constitutionalists

39

to constitute a new one. As historian Allan Greer notes for the Montreal district habitants in the fall of 1837, their organizing constituted an attempt to “reconstitute legitimate rule on new foundations” separate from existing state authority.3 In this chapter, I argue that this project of ordering extends beyond this rural area and includes the new militarized voluntary associations formed in the Canadas after the Ninety-Two Resolutions which grew out of mechanisms common to civil society, but were repurposed for new ends. I also view this process of creating a new order as including constitutionalists in the context of the formation of the British Rifle Corps in December 1835. A new order was enunciated by military associations that nonetheless continued to see themselves in terms of the values of voluntarism and a new order committed to liberal rights.

Rather than merely a sign of a breakdown in order, forming paramilitary associations was a mark of order-making. Even in the heated political climate after the

Ninety-Two Resolutions, newspapers still covered the formation of new voluntary associations and spoke of the benefit of voluntary organizing – including across partisan lines. As patriots and constitutionalists formed new political associations, they did so by calling on the importance of collective action. When newspapers covered political gatherings, they gauged their civic worth based on whether they had broad-based participation. The implication is that even with new militarized associations and meetings, newspapers were speaking to the continued voluntary origin of these new societies and remained committed to the values of voluntarism.

3 Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1993), 6. For Greer, the form of that organizing was “in the way sovereign power was actually constituted and exercised at the local level.” Ibid., 219. 40

Historians in both the Canadas and the United States have noted the growth of voluntary associations over the period.4 In fact, historian Jeffrey McNairn, places Upper

Canada’s exponential growth of voluntary associations as taking place in the twenty years between 1820 and 1840 – a period bisected by Rebellion.5 Even as newspapers became more bombastic, they still covered multiple associational meetings taking place. The

Montreal Gazette of 1836 lauded the cross-party nature of a large temperance association meeting and some residents of formed a temperance society on September 1,

1837.6 In the spring of 1837, the Toronto Patriot copied an article on the benefits of clubs from Waldie’s Circulating Library and in the summer of that year the Courier of Upper

Canada covered of both a St. Patrick’s Society and a Mechanics

Institution in Toronto. In a tongue-in-cheek article, the Minerve complained in October

1837 of the slow pace of the establishment of clubs but also noted how they had been taken up with gusto in the province. In the charged political atmosphere in the immediate post Rebellion period, some citizens of Hamilton combined to found the local Mechanics

Institution.7

4 For Lower Canada, see Jean-Marie Fecteau“État et associationnisme au XIXe siècle québécois. Éléments pour une problématique des rapports État/société dans la transition au capitalisme,” in Allan Greer and Ian Radforth eds., Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1992), 134-162. For the United States, see Albrecht Koschnik, “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together:” Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775-1840 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2007) and Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). See esp. chap. 3 “The era of association: between family and society, 1825-1845.” 5 Jeffrey L. McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy, 1791-1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 68. 6 Montreal Gazette 21 April 1836 p1 c1, Brockville Recorder, 26 October 1837 p3 c4. See for example the coverage of a propagation of the gospel society and a natural history society. Montreal Gazette 23 April 1836 p2 c3. 7 Patriot 3 March 1837 p2 c4-5; Courier of Upper Canada 27 August 1837; Minerve 16 October 1837 p1c1-3. 41

The Ninety-Two Resolutions and a new era of agitation in the Canadas

The Ninety-Two Resolutions fundamentally changed the nature of political agitation. In the words of the editor of the Montreal Vindicator, Edmund Bailey

O’Callaghan, the Resolutions “will form a new era in the history of this Colony.”8 Indeed they did. By clearly laying out, for the first time, the grievances and demands of the patriote assembly, the document served as an ultimatum to Britain. More importantly in the Canadian context, the Resolutions became a lightning rod for public opinion allowing

Lower and, to a lesser extent, Upper Canadians to more easily divide into their allies and opponents. To the patriotes, these resolutions embodied their quest for a more democratic government modeled, in many ways, on the United States and freed from British colonial control. Constitutionalists on the other hand viewed these resolutions as revealing the disloyalty of their opponents and their support of democratic, republican government.

Regardless of one’s political leanings, as Greer has concluded, “the revolutionary thrust of the Ninety-Two Resolutions was not lost on Lower Canadians of all political persuasions.”9 While a litany of Lower rather than Upper Canadian grievances, subjects in Upper Canada followed political developments in the other province intently, passing resolutions on them and discussing the actions of the patriote assembly in the press.10 In their aftermath, Upper Canada also began to divide between those who supported the direction of the patriotes and those who were opposed to their agitation.11

8 Vindicator, 25 February 1834 p2 c6. 9 Greer, Patriots and the People, 138. 10 See for example the Constitution 12 October 1836 as well as the Brockville Recorder 26 October 1837 p3 c4. 11 Allan Greer, “1837-38: Rebellion Reconsidered,” Canadian Historical Review, 76 no.1 (1995): 13. 42

While political polarization increased, voluntary organizing in the press, even across party lines, still occurred. Associating and corresponding for petitioning campaigns or to advance common goals was not, of course, new to either Lower or Upper

Canadians.12 Nor were political associations, although these were still very much a novelty.13 The period from about 1828 to early 1832 had witnessed the extension of voluntary organizing into the political realm with the development of new political associations in the Canadas. These associations, such as the British Constitutional Society of York, were modeled to a large degree on other voluntary associations.14 Both provinces had undergone very turbulent political struggles with the expulsion crisis in

Upper Canada and the shooting of three Patriote supporters at a contested poll during a

Montreal by-election in Lower Canada.15 These controversies had spawned for the first time “some form of permanent extraparliamentary organization founded not on national or religious distinctions but on essentially political criteria.”16

12 Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture in Upper Canada, 1800-1850 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). Louis-Georges Harvey, Le printemps de l’Amérique française: Américanité, anticolonisme, et républicanisme dans le discours politique québecoise, 1805-1837 (Montréal: les éditions Boréal, 2005). McNairn, Capacity to Judge. 13 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 107-109. 14 Ibid., 107. 15 In an attempt to muzzle dissent, the constitutionalist members had attempted to expel one of the most vocal reform members, William Lyon Mackenzie, from the Assembly. Each time he was expelled, the by- election called to fill his seat resulted in his triumphant return. Exasperated, constitutionalists turned to voluntary organizing with the creation of the British Constitutional Society. Wilton, 116. In Lower Canada, controversy revolved around a hotly contested seat in an 1832 by-election. After a disturbance had started, troops were called out who fired on the crowd. When the smoke cleared, three Patriotes lay dead, including the printer of the newspaper La Minèrve. The events became part of Patriote mythology. Patriotes renamed the street (St. Jacques/St. James) as “Rue du Sang” (Blood Street). Greer, Patriots and the People,141. Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes: The Rebellions in Lower Canada, 1837-38 (Stittsville, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1985), 7. James Jackson disagrees with past descriptions of the incident being a riot, arguing instead that the troops had been called out in the absence of any disturbance. James Jackson, The Riot that Never Was: The Military Shooting of Three Montrealers in 1832 and the Official Cover-up (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2009). 16 Wilton, Popular Politics, 122. In Lower Canada, the British Constitutional Society would emerge out of various groups in 1835. Most of the organizing for its creation took place in late 1835 and early 1836. Its first public declaration was issued in December 1835. Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 12. 43

The political climate of 1834 resulted in the reorganization of moribund political associations from 1832 as well as the founding of new and larger political associations.

These political associations included stirring examples of voluntarist values in their published rhetoric. For example, on July 1, 1834, some members of the original

Constitutional Society of York, founded in 1832, joined with “other friends of the British

Connection.” Their goal: to reorganize the British Constitutional Society.17 Much like a voluntary association, their introductory broadside began by outlining that the society’s sole goal was to preserve the connection between the United Kingdom and Upper

Canada. Why? Because the British connection had been almost entirely responsible for the development of the province and would ensure its continued “wealth, population, and prosperity.”18 These were men combining for mutual self-interest and prosperity. Similar to any other society, the British Constitutional Society had conditions of membership, subscriptions, a constitution, and a system for establishing branches. The British

Constitutional Society saw fit to include a statement that each member “pledge himself to oppose, by all lawful means, every attempt to weaken the Connexion, from whatever quarter it may emanate; and likewise to oppose, by all constitutional exertions, the election of all persons” who wished to dissolve the connexion.19 Such a caveat about legal means spoke to how political associations were in the precarious position of proving that they had a legitimate place in the public sphere.20 The Society was reorganized again

17 Wilton, Popular Politics,156. York had only been renamed Toronto in March of that year. 18 British Constitutional Society, Upper Canada (Toronto: np, 1834) CIHM, from the collection of the Metropolitan Toronto Library, 1. 19 Ibid. 20 Duncan Koerber notes that while the labels “” and “reformer” had come into use in the press as political markers, even in 1836 these labels were still fluid and varied. Duncan Koerber, “Early Political Parties as Mediated Communities,” Media History 19, no. 2 (2013):133. 44

in April 1836 after it had become moribund in the intervening year. Speaking to the impact of the Ninety-Two Resolutions on both provinces, one of the two justifications for its reorganization was an accusation that the Upper Canadian assembly, then dominated by reformers, had adopted the Ninety-Two Resolutions.21

In December of 1834 it was the turn of the reformers in Upper Canada to begin organizing in response to the Resolutions with the creation of the

Society, also at Toronto. With an executive comprised of prominent reform members of the assembly, such as noted reformer William Lyon Mackenzie, its goal was to work towards eighteen changes to the law ranging from the abolition of primogeniture to the creation of a written constitution.22 Two years later, on October 10, 1836, Upper

Canadian reformers gathered again for the formation of the City of Toronto Political

Union. Once again echoing the voluntarist language of mutual improvement, the society publicly pledged itself to “obviate […] the evil effects of the unconstitutional proceedings from the last general election.” Unchecked, such evils would end with the destruction of all civil and religious liberty. Those present sealed their commitment to work mutually with the resolution “that this meeting do now resolve itself into a society.”23 The City of

Toronto Political Union debated how to best free Upper Canada from the “partial and unconstitutional legislation of the imperial parliament” and communicate “with the friends of reform” across the province. 24

21 Wilton, Popular Politics, 156. The accusation that the assembly had adopted them was tenuous. 22 Charles Lindsey, The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie, Volume 1 (Toronto: P. R. Randall, 1862), 319. McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 112. As with other societies chronicled here, such organizing lapsed until revived with the reception of the Russell Resolutions. 23 Constitution 12 October 1836 p3 c5. 24 Ibid. 19 October 1836 p3 c3. 45

Throughout the period, the drive for forming political associations rested on the belief in voluntary organizing. In an article in his patriot paper, the Constitution titled

“Political Unions,” William Lyon Mackenzie outlined the various groups not friendly to reform. The lawyers, and the Methodists, tory commissioners and the militia, Strahan and the Anglicans, and “hundreds of such unions― all united to keep the people working for others, and in ignorance, or to live in ease at other men’s cost.” These clubs had the “very purpose of plotting and planning for pensions, power, place, and plunder―and so is the executive council club, the legislative council club, the Bank of

Upper Canada club, and the like of them.” Mackenzie went on to encourage Canadians to

“get up your reform clubs also” for “when bad men conspire, good men must unite.” The constitutionalist Toronto Patriot expressed the exact same phrase in response to a refusal to pay a government levy.25 The new political clubs after 1834 continued to apply voluntarist values to political organizing and these values were reflected in their public pronouncements. In Lower Canada, patriotes and constitutionalist also remained committed to values of voluntarism as will be seen in the discussion below.

Political associations judged their successes and their opponents’ failures based on broad-based participation and claims the reasons for associating were widely shared.

The associations themselves were formally open and claimed to represent the populace at large. This may have been based on a continued hope that broad-based voluntary participation would precipitate change, winning individuals over and altering policy. This was evident in how reformers and constitutionalists discussed the Orange Order in the

25 Constitution 6 September 1837 p2 c6; Patriot 26 September 1837 p2 c6; Cecilia Morgan, “‘When Bad Men Conspire, Good Men Must Unite!’: Gender and Political Discourses in Upper Canada, 1820s-,” in Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, Kathleen McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell, eds. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12-18. 46

Canadas, an organization typically seen as less a voluntary association than a sectarian organization involved in politics.26

The rhetoric around the Orange Lodge in Lower Canada primarily involved constitutionalists denying, through the press, accusations made by patriotes of the constitutionalists only being in reality a group of Orangemen—and therefore sectarian and secret rather than broad-based and public. Writing of its major meeting that year in

December 8, 1835, the Montreal Constitutional Association stated that the society was

“not as has been styled, a Society of Orangemen.”27 This fits with the main challenge the constitutionalist in Lower Canada had of arguing that their associations bridged national, religious, and linguistic divisions. An 1835 article in the Montreal Gazette emphasized that all of the various national societies, except the French, were united in the constitutionalist cause.28 After the Ninety-Two Resolutions, some Canadien politicians moved from the patriote to the constitutionalist camp. In these situations, constitutionalist papers were eager to make a great deal of any francophone support their cause received. In a letter to the editor, Runnemede, boldly stated that “all classes of the

British and Irish people joined by some of intelligent and independent minds” were banding together in the constitutionalist cause.29 An 1836 meeting of constitutionalists in the borough of William Henry took pains to note the many groups, including Canadiens and Irish, who participated.30

26 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 102. 27 Montreal Gazette 5 December 1835 p1 c6. See also December 3 1835 p2 c4. 28 Ibid. 3 December p2 c4. 29 Ibid. 2 January 1836 p1 c5-6. 30 Ibid. 12 March 1836 p2 c4. The town of Sorel (now Sorey-Tracy) was at that time known as William Henry. 47

In Upper Canada, reformers were eager to demonstrate the broad nature of their support, and so reached out to Orangemen even while criticizing Orange leaders.

Reformers keenly highlighted that ‘true’ Orangemen were eager to support reforms. An article in the Constitution, titled “Orange Men” tying good masculinity with good politics went on to describe how “government ruffians” of Yonge Street invited “a number of respectable orangemen of Markham […] to join in the intended row at Finch’s.”31 The supposed reply was that Orangemen “will never be part of such blackguard proceedings.

No honourable Irishman ever yet combined to attack and injure them who are unarmed and unsuspecting. We are Orangemen and cannot be assassins.”32 The use of the term blackguard in Mackenzie’s Constitution is of note since after exile to the United States the term became more racialized.33 This article was not a one-off anecdote but rather part of a concerted campaign in Mackenzie’s Constitution to both encourage Orangemen to join with reformers and to demonstrate to the wider public the broad popularity and therefore legitimacy to reform associating.

Those efforts are particularly noteworthy given the role of the Orange Lodge in the election of 1836 on the side of the constitutionalist forces led by Lieutenant-Governor

Sir .34 A letter by “T P” noted that “you will find many good reformers in our lodges” and warned Mackenzie that “you will never win the Orangemen by abusing them –drop that.” Mackenzie decided to publish the letter in the Constitution

31 This a reference to “The Bird in the Hand,” a tavern leased by John Finch at the corner of what is now Yonge and Finch from 1830 until possibly 1848, when Finch built a hotel. “Finch,” Historical Plaque at Finch TTC station in A Glimpse of Toronto's History, City Planning Division, Urban Development Services, City of Toronto, 2001, Accessed 22 February 2017, http://www.torontohistory.org/Pages/Finch.html. 32 Constitution 30 August 1837 p3 c7. 33 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of “blackguard” in the patriot press in exile. 34 Sean T. Cadigan, “Paternalism and Politics: Sir Francis Bond Head, the Orange Order, and Election of 1836,” Canadian Historical Review 72 No.3 (1991): 319-347. 48

titled “The Orangemen and the Reformers” along with his own commentary, partially agreeing with the letter and promising “to endeavor to the utmost of my power to refrain from widening the breach between friends by unkind personal allusions to my protestant brethren.”35 Closer to the outbreak of violence in Upper Canada, the Constitution contained an anonymous letter by ERIN calling on Orangemen and Catholics to join together, “rally around the friends of equal rights and liberal institutions” as both groups have the same interest, “happiness, prosperity, and good government.”36 Such claims to cross these distinctions were especially important given the better known alliance of orange and green on the other side.37

In addition to making claims to a broad coalition, a similar tactic was to emphasize the sheer number of people who would meet for a given cause and to disparage opponents’ meetings as small and those who did attend as deluded or coerced.

The St. Thomas Liberal was positively gleeful that “the high and mighty meeting of the

Tories of the County of Middlesex! convened by ‘the powers that be!’ for the august purpose of putting down the Reformers, has been the most complete failure, and the most confounded farce.” Many who signed the requisition for the meeting backed out and

“even the ‘Niggers’ of Wilberforce would not honour the meeting.” The comment by the

Liberal is also revealing because it is the only clear instance I can locate of a radical reform paper explicitly racializing opponents before exile.38 The comment prefigures a

35 Constitution 1 November 1837 p3 c2-3. 36 Ibid. 22 November 1837 p1 c1 37 W. B. Kerr “When Orange and Green United 1832-9; The Alliance of Macdonell and Gowan,” Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 34 (1942), 34–42. 38 For their part, Read and Stagg argue that when Mackenzie spoke at a public meeting at Stoverville (now Stouffville) days before the Rebellion on December 2 “he went far beyond” what had been used as reform rhetoric before then arguing that “Indians, Blacks, and Orangemen” would be given arms by the 49

trope used much more frequently after the move to the United States.39 The Liberal, arguing for an attendance of less than a hundred people, and noting that the constitutionalists’ liberal estimate was only 150, boasted that “the radicals could collect at a day’s notice, more than that in the smallest of the fifteen townships.” Any resolutions that would emanate from the meeting were easily dismissed. According to the editor of the Liberal, John Talbot, it was even possible that at that very moment some were conspiring “to fabricate, or pillage some half dozen resolutions, and manufacture a statement for the next [London] Gazette.”40 The London Gazette responded to the article by countering that the Liberal can only succeed “in getting a dozen individuals to consent to meet.”41 Conflicts between constitutionalists and reformers continued to be based on the metrics of voluntary organizing even as the country became more polarized and cross-party collaboration less common.

Militarized voluntary organizing and the challenge to state order

The question confronting these new political associations was how best to change the political climate. What could one do outside of elections and petitioning? There were now calls by political editors and writers in the press to use demonstrations of physical force or the formation of ‘self-defence’ organizations to push for redress as well. As with the example from Mr. McGinn cited at the beginning of this chapter, certain reformers,

government and let loose on the populace. Colin Read and Ronald Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), xl. In his newspaper, Mackenzie covered of a petition of Blacks asking to arm themselves to coerce “the whites.” Constitution 2 August 1837 p2 c7. 39 See Chapter 4. 40 Brockville Recorder, 9 November 1837 p2 c5. 41 London Gazette 28 October 1837 p3 c1. 50

patriotes, and constitutionalists grew tired of deliberation and declared continued discussion to be useless. The North West King and Tecumseh Political Union resolved in

October 1837 “that it is the opinion of this Meeting that it is useless to talk about reform any longer” as “something harder than words” was now needed.42

The British Constitutional Society in Montreal was the first to move towards advocating new tactics. The resolutions of an 1835 meeting stated that “it becomes our duty as Britons, to obtain by force what has been refused to our petitions.”43 A year later, the Society complained that little had been done on this front. The executive committee was urged to “come forward manfully with plans of action, and not mere resolutions, expressed certainly with boldness and strength, but deficient in their effect, if not promptly put into execution.”44 Coming to mean more than deliberation and petitioning, the Society openly mulled over three major campaigns: withholding taxes or non- importation, a large gathering of delegates from around province in convention, and a military organization. Historians of other contexts have analyzed the first two for their significance to the developing public sphere and civic engagement although usually they are associated with radical reform rather than constitutionalist causes.45 How does the idea of a military organization figure in such a frame?

This was not a linear evolution from petitioning, to conventions, to military organizations but rather these activities occurred simultaneously as contemporaries

42 Constitution 25 October 1837 p2 c6. 43 Montreal Gazette 10 December 1835 p2 c3. 44 Ibid. 17 March 1836 p2 c2. 45 T H. Breen, “Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution” The William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1993): 471-501. See also T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004); see Carol Wilton for a discussion of radical reform conventions in Upper Canada. Wilton, Popular Politics, 185. 51

explored the efficacy of the different directions voluntary organizing could go. As an example, in an 1836 letter to the editor of the Montreal Gazette, “Runnemede” proposed a formal resolution to the Constitutional Association that they “use all legal and constitutional means to frustrate and render abortive the laws for the collection of the

Revenue, until positive assurance be afforded that when paid into the Provincial

Treasury, it will not be placed at the mercy of the Assembly, or expended without sanction of law.”46 However, this suggestion occurred months after both the formation and ‘dissolution’ of a military corps organized by the Constitutional Society, the British

Rifle Corps.

What did this system of quasi-military organization look like? Contemporaries turned to what they knew about organizing and the press. As with other initiatives, members voted that the British Constitutional Society create a committee to report on how to best proceed. One of its recommendations was that:

the executive committee have been very desirous of organizing Ward Committees throughout the City and Suburbs [of Montreal], the utility of which would be fielded in the event of any emergency arising, requiring union and strength; – but they fear that their wishes have been but partially and imperfectly carried into effect ; and this Committee cannot refrain from recommending the immediate and general adoption of a system of organization.47

Four days later the Montreal Gazette reported that the members followed the executive committee’s recommendation and were forming a force for protection but also to create

46 Montreal Gazette 2 January 1836 p1 c6. 47 Ibid. 8 December 1835 p 2 c4. 52

an “imposing display of moral determination” to demonstrate their resolve to the government.48

As with other political associations in the Canadas, Montreal constitutionalists bent on such a display benefitted from active collaboration with friendly papers. The

Montreal Herald was “l’organ de diffusion” for the various paramilitary organizations and urban patrols.49 In addition Robert Weir Jr., the main force behind the Herald, was both a signatory to the British Rifle Corps public declaration of December 22 and later a member of the Doric Club.50 As a harbinger of being the organ for organizations that would soon challenge state order, historian François Deschamps notes that

‘paradoxically’ “le Montreal Herald partage avec ses adversaire radicaux du Vindicator et de l’honneur d’être parmi les rares feuilles ouvertement hostiles à l’administration Gosford.”51

While the Herald was the mouthpiece for ultra toryism and the British Rifle

Corps, it fiery rhetoric met with a fiery end in 1910 when a major conflagration destroyed its offices, including its newspaper archive.52 However, Deschamps has discovered and analyzed two scrapbooks of Herald articles, one collected by Charles Kadwell, the other by Robert Mackay, as well as a collection of Herald abstracts.53 In doing so, he has produced a great deal of work on the Herald’s views of and role in the Rebellion,

48 Ibid. 12 December 1835 p2 c2-3. 49 François Deschamps, La “rebéllion de 1837” à travers le prisme du Montreal Herald: la réfondation par les armes des institutions politiques canadiennes (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2015), 90. 50 Ibid., 90-91. Historians previously viewed Adam Thom as the driving force of the Montreal Herald in that period. While Thom was indeed editor-in-chief, Deschamps identifies Robert Weir Jr. as the key decision-maker, given his role as proprietor and director of the newspaper. 51 Ibid., 96-97 52 Ibid., 90. 53 François Deschamps, “Le Radicalisme Tory à travers le prisme du Montreal Herald et la mobilisation des milices dans le district de Montréal (1834-1837),” (Thèse de maîtrise en arts, UQAM, 2011), 46. 53

Toryism, and Canadien-British coexistence.54 From his thorough work, it is clear that the

Herald was deeply embedded in attempts at organizing along quasi-military lines.

With the loss of the Herald, I turn my focus to the Montreal Gazette, the other major constitutionalist paper in Montreal. Both Gilles Laporte and André Lefebvre note that together the Herald and the Gazette constituted the principal British constitutionalists journals and with the Ami du Peuple constituted the major journals of Lower Canada.55

Weir of the Herald viewed the Gazette as an auxiliary and Deschamps notes the paper usually aligned with the Herald.56 Gazette scholar and columnist John Kalbfleisch states that the Gazette did not “shrink from endorsing the English speaking Doric clubs, whom it saw as admirable defenders of the status quo.”57

From the Gazette, it is evident that the “system of organization” adopted was the same as a voluntary association. Created at a public meeting on December 12, 1835 in

Montreal, the British Rifle Corps was to be a force 800 strong. Its purpose was to show, according to its published , “hearts resolved and hands prepared, our freedom and our rights to guard.” Like other voluntary associations, the Corps had an executive committee, passed resolutions, held internal elections, advertized regular meetings, and

54 Ibid. See also François Deschamps “La coexistence des communautés canadienne et britannique vue par le Montreal Herald (1837-1839),” La revue d'histoire du Québec, no. 121, 2015, p. 9-12. Deschamps, La rébellion. 55 Gilles Laporte, Patriotes et Loyaux: Leadership regional et mobilisation politique en 1837 et 1838 (Québec: Septentrion, 2004), 101. André Lefebvre, La Montreal Gazette et le nationalisme canadien (1835-1842) (Montreal: Guérin, 1970), See also similar coverage in Laporte’s Brève histoire des patriotes (Quebec: Septentrion, 2015), 120-122. Although similar, the Montreal Gazette was more moderate than the Herald. Deschamps, La rébellion, 96. Both Laporte and Lefebvre highlight the Gazette’s emphasis on Britishness. John Kalbfleisch contends that while the Gazette was “Tory” it was more a “champion of the settled way of doing things, and the enemy of those who would challenge that,” rather than cleaving on purely linguistic lines. John Kalbfleisch, “The Evolution of The Gazette as an Official Language Minority Newspaper” Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens (2007): 33. 56 Deschamps, La rébellion, 135. 57 Kalbfleisch, Evolution of The Gazette, 34-35. Unlike others, Kalbfleisch pluralizes “Doric clubs.” 54

published its proceedings in the press. Yet the British Rifle Corps also sought out arms and ammunition.58 The Herald underlined the dual nature of the society “Let organization be the word . . . The organization that it may combine both moral determination and physical force, must be as military as political. THERE MUST BE AN

ARMY AS WELL AS A CONGRESS. THERE MUST BE PIKES AND RIFLES.”59

The Montreal Constitutional Association justified the British Rifle Corps in public as a necessary step to both self-defence in case of an “emergency” and as a way to publicly demonstrate their resolve to government authority and specifically to Lieutenant-

General John Colborne, Commander-in-Chief of Forces in the Canadas.60 The public organizing of a non-state military Corps was, in itself, a major challenge to state authority. Here constitutionalists were reacting to what they perceived as an illegitimate government in the form of an unrepresentative and treasonous assembly left uncontrolled by an out-of-touch governor. Using the voluntary benchmark of broad-based participation, constitutionalists cast the assembly as a French clique. A letter writer to the

Gazette, calling for “resistance” in the form of withholding taxes, even paraphrased the cry of the American Revolution stating twice “no representation – no taxation!” pointing to the perceived unrepresentative, and therefore illegitimate, nature of the assembly.61 In their final proclamation before dissolving, the Corps accused patriotes of using the state for election violence and the militia overseen by Clément-Charles Sabrevois de Bleury of

58 Montreal Gazette 12 December 1835 p3 c3. 59 Quoted in the Vindicator 18 December 1835 p2 c6. The Minerve also contains the same quote translated from the Herald but without the emphasis. Minerve 14 December 1835 p2 c3. This suggests that the emphasis on the military aspect was made by the Vindicator and not in the original Herald. Both the Minerve and Vindicator have copied the same passage and the Vindicator has used bold type; this speaks to the importance of militarized organizing and to its being the threshold for a challenge to state order or at least an interpretation by opponents of being treasonous. 60 Montreal Gazette 12 December 1835 p2 c2-3. 61 Ibid., 8 December 1835 p2 c1. 55

being political.62 Voluntary organizing had turned to a military end, and the one the state declared illegitimate first was composed of Montreal’s constitutionalists.

In their public address to Earl Gosford to request state sanction, the British Rifle

Corps stated that the impetus for their formation was to preserve the connection to Great

Britain and maintain rights guaranteed to them by the constitution.63 It was not simply that they were organizing militarily to preserve order and for self-defence of persons and property threatened by armed conflict, but also to preserve constitutional rights and the existing political arrangements – aspects of civic life that were to be protected by existing state structures. Instead of being constituted as part of state authority, the British Rifle

Corps was self-organized and while nominally loyal to the government was responsible to an elected executive chosen by the very membership now arming itself. In essence, the only authority for taking up arms came from those taking up arms. Only after organizing themselves did the British Rifle Corps ask for approval from state authorities. At their second meeting, the Corps expressed a desire for Colborne to “sanction” the organization and approve the officers.64 The next meeting produced an address to the Earl Gosford,

Governor-in-Chief of British North America and Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, from the British Rifle Corps explaining their reasoning and asking for his sanction.65

62 In Collaboration, “Clément-Charles Sabrevois de Bleury,” DCB; Montreal Gazette 9 January 1836 p3 c1- 2. As Dan Horner reminds us, this was a period in which “political attitudes were not formed and defended in quiet contemplation, but in an environment where politics were a public act.” Dan Horner, “Taking to the Streets: Crowds, Politics and Identity in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal” (PhD Dissertation, York University, 2010), 9. 63 Montreal Gazette 24 December1835 p3 c1. The precise wording was “to maintain unimpaired the rights and privileges confirmed to them by the Constitution.” The “constitution” could refer to the Constitutional Act of 1791 of the British Parliament establishing Upper and Lower Canada or to the British constitution more generally. 64 Montreal Gazette 17 December 1835 p2 c4. 65 Ibid. 24 December 1835 p3 c1. 56

Patriote opponents saw the organizing of the Corps for what it was, a violation of the state’s monopoly on the use of force, and in that sense a challenge to the existing order. Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan in the Vindicator noted that as Gosford gestured to redress patriote grievances, constitutionalist “loyalty is forgotten, or conveniently pocketed; and violence and revolution are openly resolved upon.” Upon quoting excerpts from the Herald, the Vindicator, continued

Upon the mere supposition that the order of things is about to be changed, that the oligarchy who have so long preyed upon the vitals of the country, were about to be disturbed in their work of plunder, and “physical force”—“an army as well as a Congress”—“pikes and rifles”—usurp the place of their hackneyed expressions of loyalty and respect for the law.66

The Minerve also copied the same, but translated the ‘physical force-pikes and rifles’ extract from the Herald noting that of the constitutionalists: “on les croirait vraiment décides à produire quelqu’ émeute.” Readers of the extract could see “les injonctions du comité exécutif de former un organisation capable de tenir un coup de main.”67 Here,

“coup de main” probably meant “helping hand.” It could also have the double-entendre meaning of a fast, hard strike, used as a military term. When news of the Corps reached reform papers in Upper Canada, the reaction was the same. The Brockville Recorder, when copying Gosford’s proclamation, reminded the leaders of “the rebellious Rifle

Corps” to remember the fate of the Cato street conspiracy and its leaders.68 Voluntarism

66 Vindicator 15 December 1835 p2 c1. 67 Minerve 14 December 1835 p2 c2; Brockville Recorder 22 January 1836 p3 c1; Vindicator 8 January 1836 p3 c3. 68 Brockville Recorder 22 January 1836 p3 c1. The Cato Street Conspiracy was an 1820 plot by British radicals, led by Arthur Thistlewood, to assassinate the British cabinet. The plot was discovered and many of the participants executed. 57

was replacing constitutional forms as constitutionalists no longer accepted the latter’s legitimacy.

It was not only the patriotes and reformers more broadly who were concerned with the challenge to the state that the British Rifle Crops posed. O’Callaghan in his

Vindicator spoke approvingly of the fact that Gosford had sent letters to “Law officers of the Crown” and “Military authorities” were “enquiring into the nature and object of an advertisement which appeared lately in the Constitutional Journals of this place.”69 The editor of the Gazette responded positively to this extract from the Vindicator noting that

Gosford would now find out “the state of public feeling.”70

The Corps sent the address asking for state sanction to Gosford on Christmas Eve,

1835. On January 2 Gosford wrote in reply that the Corps was unnecessary and inflaming public opinion.71 Some Corps members and supporters appear to have taken little note of

Gosford’s reply. The editor of the Gazette stated that “Whether it receives his sanction or not, the corps is formed, its members are known to each other, and all are prepared to take their stand for the preservation of their mutual rights. They care little for the approbation of Earl Gosford or his allies, and his disapproval will give them no concern.”72 After approximately three weeks, Gosford ruled that the Corps was unconstitutional and illegal, and ordered it to disband.73 Even so, the Corps promised to maintain the position it had already assumed and to “proceed as far as justifiable in the organization and training requisite, so that in [an] emergency our efforts may be the more

69 Vindicator 18 Dec 1835 p2 c5. 70 Montreal Gazette 19 Dec 1835 p2 c4. 71 Ibid. 2 January 1836 p2 c6. 72 Ibid. 31 December 1835 p2 c6-p3 c1. 73 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 13-14. Montreal Gazette 19 January 1836 p2 c5-6. 58

prompt and efficient.”74 Only on January 20, meeting in defiance of Gosford, did the

British Rifle Corps formally dissolved only to re-form itself into the Montreal British

Legion.75 The tension between extra-parliamentary organizing and the state had not been resolved.

So ended the major experiment in constitutionalists constructing aspects of an order independent of state structures and outside state sanction; however, were other constitutionalist organizations such as the Corps’ successor, the Montreal British Legion, engaged in a similar project of order-forming along voluntary lines? The same question might be asked of the two other major constitutionalist political associations of Montreal: the Doric Club and the Axe-Handle Guards. François Deschamps argues that the Corps and these three organizations were part of the same phenomenon of “une police parallèle privée et l'avant-garde d'une faction politique” and places them in the longer history of political violence in Montreal, tracing their origins to the night patrols formed around the

1834 election.76 There had been political violence before in Montreal and it would continue with the being a major decade of political unrest.77 As well, political violence perpetrated by organized groups was not limited to Montreal in this period.78

However, I would argue that press coverage betrays a crucial difference. The Montreal

74 Montreal Gazette 9 January 1836 p3 c1-2. 75 Ibid. 21 January 1836 p2 c5-6. 76 Deschamps, “Le Radicalisme Tory” résumé, xii. Deschamps, La rébellion, 153-154. 77 Horner, “Taking to the Streets;” H. C. Pentland, “The Lachine Canal Strike” Canadian Historical Review 29 no. 3 (1948): 255-277; See also Dan Horner, “‘Shame upon you as men!:’ Contesting Authority in the Aftermath of Montreal’s Gavazzi Riot” Histoire sociale/Social history 44, no. 87 (2011): 29–52; Ian Radforth, “Political Demonstrations and Spectacles During the Rebellion Losses Controversy in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 92, no.1 (2011): 1–41. 78 Scott W. See, “Orange Order and Social Violence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Saint John,” Acadiensis 13, no. 1 (1983): 68–92. See also Michael Cottrell, “St Patrick’s Day Parades in Nineteenth-Century Toronto: A Study of Immigrant Adjustment and Elite Control” In Nation of Immigrants: Women, Workers, and Communities in Canadian History, 1840s-1960s, edited by Franca Iacovetta, Paula Draper, and Robert Ventresca, 35-54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. 59

British Legion, Doric Club, and Axe-Handle Guards, while founded at around the same time as the Corps, were different.79 The Corps’ organization was covered in the press and newspapers were instrumental in its organization, whereas, for these other organizations, it was not. To act in public was one of the crucial aspects of voluntary organizing.

With its founding, the Montreal British Legion promptly disappears from the extant papers. Deschamps provides a reference from the Montreal Herald that the Legion,

Axe-Handle Guards, and Doric Club lined the street to see Colborne when he passed through Montreal in February 1836.80 He also notes that a letter to the editor of the

Herald was from “Legion” although whether that was a reference to the organization is unclear.81 In April 1836 the Gazette also copied a reference to the Axe-Handle Guards from the Herald:

On and after the first day of May next, Montreal will be destitute of watchmen and lights, the Act of Parliament for collecting a fund for those purposes expiring at that period. At it [i.e. at the end of the watchmen] is probably that some of the hired bullies of the House of Assembly may make cowardly attacks on the persons and properties of the ‘little body of the people,’ we think the Axe-Handle Guards should be organized, and exercised in the game of single- stick. A friend has suggested the use of lanterns, as when attacked, he has invariably found that by raising the lantern to the face of a scoundrel, he avoids the light, his deeds

79 As will be seen, except for a few oblique references, these organizations were outside of the printed sphere. Adam Thom was accused by Papineau in a serialized “Histoire de l’insurrection du Canada” published in May 1839 of being involved in the Doric Club. Histoire de l’insurrection du Canada par L.-J. Papineau de ci-devant Chambre d’assemblé du Bas Canada en réfutation de Lord Durham (Burlington, Vermont: L. Duvernay, 1839). However, according to Deschamps, Papineau’s claim was refuted by the Herald. Deschamps, La rébellion, 91–92; Fernand Ouellet, “Louis-Joseph Papineau,” DCB. Originally published in Paris in a journal, the Papineau’s text was republished by Duvernay. See Louis-Joseph Papineau, Histoire de la résistance du Canada au gouvernement anglais: texte intégral, ed. Georges Aubin (Montreal: Comeau et Nadeau, 2001), 8. 80 Gérard Filteau, Histoire des patriotes (Montreal: L’Aurore, 1975), 270; Deschamps, La rébellion, 153n1. 81 Ibid., 93. Deschamps does not outline what the letter contained. 60

being evil, and by averting his face, affords an excellent opportunity of knocking him down.82

Here the Herald proposed the Axe-Handle Guards stand in for the state-paid municipal night watch. However, if replacing the state order was the case as that order began to step back due to parliamentary deadlock, it was secondary to the casting of violence as sport.

The Herald even used the term “game” and playfully suggested that their lanterns be used as weapons—knocking an opponent down by “raising” a lantern to their face. Here the press notice cast violence as sport, rather than actively organizing through the public sphere a new night watch to replace the existing state-sanctioned one.

Scholars have indicated the way in which street violence acted as sport in ways that detract from any sense of voluntary organizing to create a new order.83 The press under study, for instance, contains a number of other examples of violence being cast as lighthearted sport. The Montreal Gazette portrayed a confrontation of constitutionalists and patriots as a snowball fight.84 The difference in form and lack of public presence between the British Rifle Corps and both the Montreal British Legion and the Axe-

Handle Guards is also evident in historical studies.85 The Legion and Axe-Handle Guards

82 Herald copied in the Montreal Gazette 12 April 1836 p2 c5. 83 Scott See, “Orange Order and Social Violence.” 84 Montreal Gazette 16 January 1836 p2 c5–6 The Patriot of Toronto copied a story from the Elkton Courier of Elkton, Maryland. In the Courier article, an attempted assault on a girl by a man on a steamboat resulted in the passengers severely beating him. What is interesting is that this violent response—instead of delivering the man to legal authorities—to an “attempted Outrage” was cast as a good news story. That such a story made it to Toronto from Maryland demonstrates the popular appetite across North America for these types of stories and how they were cast. Patriot 28 March 1837 p2 c4. See also Brian Clarke, “Religious riot as pastime: Orange Young Britons, parades and public life in Victorian Toronto” in The Orange Order in Canada, ed. David A. Wilson (Dublin Four Courts Press, 2007), 109–127. 85 The Montreal British Legion is described as forming out of the British Rifle Corps in Deschamps, La rébellion, 157; Laporte, Patriote et Loyaux, 119; and Filteau, Histoire des patriotes, 270. 61

are such an enigma that some works even cast the British Rifle Corps as forming directly into the Doric Club, rather than the British Legion.86

Of these later groups, the Doric Club is more well-known as it was responsible for a major riot with the Sons of Liberty on November 6, 1837 that included the destruction of the office of the Vindicator.87 The Doric Club held their first public meeting on

December 15, 1835, soon after the formation of the British Rifle Corps. The Gazette provided a short summary of this first Doric club annual meeting. The paper mentioned it had been in existence for about a year suggesting the Doric Club as on rather a parallel track to the British Rifle Corps rather than its successor. It was self-described as a

“political club” and that was the reason given for why the regimental band was not there.

The meeting included combative and loyal toasts such as one to “our rights and priviledges, infringe them who DARE.”88 As with the Montreal British Legion, after the public founding of the Corps, the press statements stop except for the reference found by

Deschamps to their presence when Colborne passed through Montreal in February

1836.89 In March 1836, the Doric Club distributed a manifesto promising to defend

British interests, however it still, at least publicly, committed itself to “meetings,

86 François Deschamps notes that there is an uninterrupted filiation between the British Rifle Corps and the Doric Club. However others have confused common goals and heritage for actual organizational overlap— pushing the Montreal British Legion away. Deschamps, La rébellion, 166. Paul Rochon states that the Doric Club replaced the British Rifle Corps but then notes that the Montreal British Legion was founded out of the Doric Club. Paul Rochon, 1837: la petite histoire des Patriotes (Montreal: Éditions du Taureau, 1987), 76. Leaving the impression that the Doric Club was the successor organization to the British Rifle Crops, Elinor Kyte Senior states that the extreme members of the British Rifle Corps went underground to found the Doric Club. Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 14. Ducharme notes that after the dissolution of the corps “il faut ensuite attendre 1837 pour qu’un autre groupe paramilitaire se forme: le Doric Club.” Michel Ducharme Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des révolutions Atlantiques (1776-1838) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- University Press, 2010), 225. 87 Senior, Redcoats and Patriots, Chapter 4. 88 Montreal Gazette, 17 December 1835 p2 c4. 89 Deschamps, La rébellion, 153n1. 62

addresses and petitions.” After that, “on perd ensuite la trace du Doric Club jusqu’au lundi 6 novembre 1837.”90 Even if the membership of the Corps transferred to the Doric

Club, its near-complete removal from the public sphere signals a move away from a challenge to the state authority based on voluntary liberal principles.

Similar tensions arose, on a lesser extent, in Upper Canada. In that province, the

Orange Lodge took on something of the role that the quartet of constitutionalist organizations did in Montreal. The political violence associated with the Orange Lodge was on a spectrum including both informal mob violence as well as ritualized violence to intimidate opponents. The Orange Order was very much trying to foster an aura of respectability, yet was also the instigator of much of the political violence in this period.

This was especially the case in the 1836 election which a number of historians have chronicled was notable for the level of Orange violence.91

This division between seeing the Orange Order primarily as a deliberative voluntary association and as sectarian Tory bullies is evident in past academic work on the Order. Scholars such as Jeffrey McNairn, Greg Kealey, David Wilson, and Hereward

Senior have highlighted the associational nature of the Order and its role in bringing ideas of democratic sociability to the more working-class elements of society.92 Historians such

90 Montreal Gazette 24 March 1836 p3 c2-3; Laporte, Patriotes and Loyaux, 122. Deschamps, however, notes that the Doric Club remerges in the Herald earlier pointing to a July 1837 reference to that group and the Axe-Handle Guards: “Bien que certains des supporteurs les plus engagés du parti patriote aient signalé leur intention d’y porter des armes, le propriétaire du Herald se dit convaincu que personne n’osera s’en servir. En cas contraire, annonce-t-il, une ‘terrible riposte’ les attend : ‘[…] on doit s’attendre à un affrontement et nous espérons que la collision surviendra. Les membres du Doric Club et des Gardes à manche de hache doivent être prêts au pire.’” Deschamps, La rébellion, 166. 91 Wilton, Popular Politics, 182; Wilton “Lawless Law,” 118–119, 122, 124; Sean Cadigan, “Paternalism and Politics,” 320, 328–329. 92 McNairn, Capacity to Judge; Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 1862-1892 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Wilson ed. Orange Order; Hereward Senior Orangeism: The Canadian Phase (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972). 63

as Carol Wilton, Scott W. See, Michael Cottrell, and Robert McLaughlin have emphasized its violent, sectarian nature.93 However, parades and music were rituals to assert control and intimidate opponents—violence could be part of that rather than just a sort of ‘mob’ action or ‘outburst.’ In addition to their voluntary influences outlined below, the Orange Lodge in Upper Canada also had a similar relationship to newspapers as that of the Montreal constitutionalist groups organized to use armed force. Ogle R.

Gowan, the then Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America, had made a number of attempts to start a newspaper, finally succeeding with the publication of the Brockville Statesman in this period.94

In the press, the Orange Lodge cast itself as respectable and non-sectarian. The

Courier of Upper Canada covered a meeting of Orange Lodge 137 in Toronto which included toasts to the “Constitutional Catholics” of Upper Canada as well as one to

Catholic Bishop Alexander Macdonell.95 The Cobourg Star noted that in conformity with resolutions passed by the Grand Lodge and the District Lodge, there was no parade by the

Orange Lodge on the 12th of July 1836. There was however a dinner which extended thanks to Catholics, as fellow loyal subjects.96 The Star continued: “We are happy to say that the good sense and good feelings of our loyal Orange friends in this district, induced them to waive their accustomed procession on the 12th instant. A resolution which

93 Wilson, The Orange Order in Canada “Introduction: ‘Who are these people?’,” 11 94 Don Akenson, The Orangeman: The Life and Times of Ogle Gowan (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1986). 122-124, 147, and 189. Hereward Senior, “Ogle Robert Gowan,” DCB. Akenson states that Gowan founded the Statesman in Brockville in 1837 (Akenson, 189) while Senior in his DCB biography of Gowan gives the date of the paper’s establishment as 1836. 95 Courier of Upper Canada 16 July 1837 p2 c2-3. The Courier gave the location as “Edinburgh Castle,” which appears to have been a tavern. See, Neptunian no. 5 ([1843]): 55. Orange Lodge 137 was based in Toronto. “Grand Orange Lodge of Canada 1846,”Canadian Orange Historical Site, accessed 13 July 2017, http://canadianorangehistoricalsite.com/GRANDORANGELODGEOFCANADA1846.php 96 Cobourg Star 20 July 1836 p2 c2. 64

entitled them to the respect of the whole community.”97 Thomas Dalton, the editor of the constitutionalist Toronto Patriot, noted the appearance of the Brockville Statesman and that “From the known talents of Mr. Gowan we have the fullest expectation that the

Statesman will, be an effectual antidote to the poison perpetually concocting by that despicable print the Brockville Recorder.”98 Here the Lodge in Upper Canada was cultivating respectability, non-sectarianism, and respect from the broader constitutionalist community and acting like a voluntary association with public meetings, resolutions, and symbiotic relationship to the press.

Reformers castigated the Orange lodge for their conditional loyalty, factionalism, sectarianism, and violence. This did not stop reformers from also reaching out to

Orangmen as noted earlier. Mackenzie underlined Orange conditional loyalty in a copy of a critique from the London Globe: “they are loyal and obedient to the orders of their chiefs, and to the wishes of their Imperial Master, as long as these are in accordance with their own views.”99 A common tactic was to reference the controversy over the banning of the Orange Lodge in Ireland and the investigation into the existence of Orange Lodges in the Army in violation of military protocol. Reform papers copied from England the charges of an Orange conspiracy and how the Irish Orange Lodge had recently voted to disband itself out of loyalty, compared to the continuation of the Lodges in the

Canadas.100 Mackenzie accused Governor Head of favouritism for Orangemen and

97 Ibid. 19 July 1837 p2 c5. 98 Patriot 11 November 1836 p3 c2. 99 London Globe copied in the Constitution 27 July 1836 p2 c3. 100 The disbanding took place on April 14, 1836. Brockville Recorder 22 January 1836 p1 c3-6; Constitution 11 July 1836 p3 c7. See also Mackenzie’s praise for a local notable who, according to him, left the Lodge out of “due respect of the King’s command” Constitution 19 July 1836 p3 c4-5. 65

Orangemen of disloyalty.101 A letter to a reform paper from “Q in the Corner” claimed

Orangemen were only interested in “political religion” and were not faithful church goers.102 Mackenzie noted that the Lodge in Kingston “have insulted the Catholics of that place” by processing on July 12, the annual day Orangemen marched to commemorate the 1690 Battle of the Boyne.103 In outlining documents revealing the existence of Lodges in regiments stationed in Lower Canada, the Vindicator reminded readers that those who had been shot dead by the 32nd Regiment in 1832—one intimated to contain a Lodge— were all Catholic.104 In one example of Orange electoral violence, reformers decried the violence in Grenville during the 1836 election, the Cobourg Reformer claiming one of the issues was that the named a “violent Orangeman as returning officer.”105 In another example, Mackenzie printed a letter from a correspondent accusing Orangeman

George Elliott of killing a man in a duel.106 Radical reformers struggled with the Orange

Lodge because of their commitment to voluntarism. Radical reformers reached out to

Orangemen because of a desire to build a broader movement and the idea that rational men could be persuaded. However, those same reformers also recoiled at Orange factionalism, sectarianism, and organized violence which ran contrary to those same values that caused reform overtures to the Orangemen in the first place.

A writer to the Reformer, W. B. Wells, also complained of the treatment of such complaints by the allied Orange press. Wells’ letter attacked Gowan for denying involvement of Orangemen in election riots in Leeds. Wells also noted that Gowan

101 Copied in Cobourg Star 3 August 1836 p2 c4. Chatterton called it “elegant slang.” 102 Brockville Recorder 9 November 1837 p3 c2-5. 103 Constitution 19 July 1836 p3 c5. 104 Vindicator 8 Jan 1836 p3c3. 105 Cobourg Reformer in Mackenzie’s Gazette 4 July 1836 p3 c6. 106 Constitution 27 July 1836 p2 c2. 66

refused to print the letter in his Statesman.107 It was this conception of the Orange Lodge as a secretive organization working for its own interest at variance with public good and refusing public debate in its press that may have influenced patriot perceptions in exile that oath bound associations did not contain the true values of voluntary associations.

Regardless, both patriots and constitutionalists forces in the two Canadas claimed the mantle of voluntary organizing. Constitutionalists argued Orange organizing was similar to that of other voluntary associations while patriots refused to see such organizations as akin to other organizations in civil society. The Orange Lodge in Upper Canada was active in print and published its meetings through the press, as was the British Rifle

Corps. Constitutionalists undertook such militarized voluntary organizing first in Lower

Canada as they did not see themselves as holding any sway in the Assembly, so they worked around it by beginning to build an order that challenged state structures and asking authorities only for retroactive sanction.

Patriots

If the constitutionalist British Rifle Corps constituted the first use of voluntary organizing to challenge the existing state order, reform and patriote supporters also moved in the direction of an organized military force growing out of more traditional liberal voluntary associations. Patriotes had established central and permanent committees in a number of locations in Lower Canada with the Montreal Committee established the day after the adoption of the Ninety-Two Resolutions.108 However, it was

107 Cobourg Reformer in Mackenzie’s Gazette 4 July 1836 p3 c6. 108 Denis Monière, Ludger Duvernay et la révolution intellectuelle au Bas Canada (Montreal: Québec/Amérique, 1987), 96. 67

the Canadian reception in early 1837 of the response to the Ninety-Two Resolutions,

Lord John Russell’s Ten Resolutions, that radicalized both patriotes and reformers.109

Patriote organizing along such lines really only began in October 1837 when patriote supporters combined to form a similar association to the British Rifle Corps: the Sons of

Liberty/Fils de la liberté.

While the Sons of Liberty did not begin until the latter part of 1837, there are a number of antecedents that point to patriotes moving in a similar direction to the organizers of the British Rifle Corps. Soon after the adoption of the Ninety-Two

Resolutions, Ludger Duvernay, the editor of the patriote Minerve, founded the society,

“Aide-toi et le ciel t’aidera.” Denis Monière argues that the society “prefigured” the Sons of Liberty that emerged a few years later.110 It was a voluntary association with an explicit devotion to the public sphere: the goal was to increase the political sagacity and writing of its members. Each month a member would deliver a lecture on a political or literary subject. The society was a fledgling but not-military challenge to state order. It was secret, so as to not expose the discussion of its members, and also had a similar name to societies instrumental in the 1830 July Revolution in France that toppled Charles X.111

Yet, it was not until the passage of the Russell resolutions when such a challenge entered the public sphere and involved extending voluntary principles to military action.

109 Jarett Henderson, “Banishment to : Gender, Race, Empire, Independence and the Struggle to Abolish Irresponsible Government in Lower Canada,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 46, no. 92 (2013): 339. See Chapter 3 for the effect of the Russell Resolutions on radicalizing the patriot press. 110 Monière, Duvernay, 98-99. For a specific treatment on Duvernay and the Minerve see Jean-Marie Lebel “Ludger Duvernay et La Minerve: étude d’une entreprise de presse montréalaise de la première moitié du xixe siècle,” (Masters Thesis, Université Laval, 1982). 111 Gian Mario Cazzaniga, Frères chasseurs, Brother hunters: Une histoire méconnue de charbonnerie canadienne & les églises chrétiennes et la franc-maçonnerie (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009), 11; Monière, Duvernay, 98; Jean-Marie Lebel, “Ludger Duvernay,” DCB. 68

On the morning of January 8, 1836 a small handbill went up in Montreal calling for reformers to form Volunteer “Voltigeurs.” The Gazette was floored, dubbing it an

“astounding announcement” and noting patriote leaders (it used Clique) were vehemently denying it and that the Vindicator blamed the Tories.112 O’Callaghan, under the title

“Tory Tricks,” noted in his Vindicator the bad French with which the handbill was written.113 If the handbill had indeed been written by a patriote, it would constitute the first attempt at a similar organization to the British Rifle Corps. However, patriotes were clearly not publicly organizing along these lines given the denial from the Vindicator.

Reputedly the inspiration of the Sons of Liberty came from young men of the small eastern Upper Canadian settlement of Vankleek Hill. Drawing on the grievances in both Upper and Lower Canada, they founded The Young Men’s Political Association.

The members engaged with the public declarations of both Upper Canadian reformers and Lower Canadian patriote and addressed themselves to reformers in both provinces.114

Formed at a meeting on July 29, 1837, the association aired grievances about the Russell

Resolutions, the commissioners sent to investigate grievances in Lower Canada, and the issue of the clergy reserves in Upper Canada.115 However, speaking to a move towards a challenge to state structures, the Association began their resolutions with the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. In addition, following a similar pattern to the

Montreal Constitutional Association before the founding of the British Rifle Corps, the

Young Men’s Political Association resolved that it was useless to petition, declaring it

112 Montreal Gazette January 9 1836 p3 c2. 113 Vindicator 8 January 1836 p3 c3. 114 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes,16. Constitution 4 October 1837 p2 c1-2 and 23 August 1837 p2; Vindicator 11 August 1837 p3. 115 The controversy around clergy reserves centred on the holding of land for the purposes of supporting the Anglican church to the exclusion of all other denominations. 69

“base, mean and servile” to petition the monarch or the Imperial Parliament.116 In the shift towards para-military organization, petitioning again lost its association as an effective tactic, as deliberations took on particularly martial characteristics. At a later meeting, the Association expressed concern with the violence met by reformers at their meetings north of Toronto and resolved to “applaud the determination of the Reformers to prepare themselves at all future meetings with the means of self-defence.”117 By their name, the Young Men’s Political Association reflected other deliberative debating societies in British North America, yet in this case the society was much more political and republican than other similarly designated societies had been in the past.118

The organizing of the Sons of Liberty began soon after in August of 1837.119 It was not just a self-organized militia battalion, but explicitly created as a deliberative voluntary association that encompassed military organizing as well. As Amédée Papineau noted: “dans le principe, l’Association des Fils de la Liberté avait été formée pour répandre les connaissances politique parmi la jeunesse et lui donner de bonne heure du goût pour les affaires publiques. Mais bientôt le plan avait été modifié, de manière à en faire tout à la fois une société civile et militaire.”120

Although beginning in August, it was not until October that the Sons of Liberty adopted military preparations and published their first declaration. The group had published notices in the press before calling for meetings of either the “local assemblies”

116 Vindicator 11 August 1837 p3 c3. 117 Constitution 4 October 1837 p2 c2. 118 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 85–91. 119 Senior, Redcoats and Patriots,16. 120 Amédée Papineau, Journal d’un Fils de la Liberté, 1838-1855 (Quebec: les éditions de Septentrion, 2010), 69. 70

or the “comité de régie.”121 The Sons published an “Address of the Sons of Liberty, of

Montreal, to the YOUNG MEN of the North American Colonies” as a broadside and in the Vindicator on October 4, 1837 and in the Minerve on October 9.122 At the first major meeting in October, the Minerve carried its proceedings and noted its respectable and orderly nature even in the face of constitutionalist harassment.123

The broadside best exemplified the tandem goals of fostering deliberation by establishing reading rooms and actively fostering discussion and military training. In the past, the deliberative nature of the Sons of Liberty has been minimized as a “mask” or a

“front.”124 The Sons of Liberty was not an example of any sort of “front organization” but rather was the pushing of the boundaries of voluntary organizing. The idea of a ‘front’ reflects a more modern notion that violence has no place in civil society, therefore any sort of organized violence must have been subversive and clandestine. However, such a mental cordon sanitaire around violence does not appear to have existed in mid- nineteenth century North America. The organizing was both para-military and voluntarist.

Amédée Papineau, son of patriote leader Louis-Joseph Papineau, recounted in his journals one of the founding meetings on September 25, 1837. Like many voluntary associations, the organizing began with an assembly. The assembly nominated a committee, of which Amédée was a member, to report back to a meeting the following

121 Minerve 14 September 1837 p3 c3 and 21 September 1837 p3 c4. 122 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie - Feuilles volantes, FV 19, “Address of the Sons of Liberty of Montréal to the Young Men of the North American Colonies” Éditeur Montréal: [s.n], 1837 [79970], http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/1935279. Vindicator 4 October 1837; Minerve 9 October 1837 p2c5-6-p3 c1. 123 Minerve 5 October 1837 p2 c2-3. 124 Papineau, Journal, 1. Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 17. 71

Sunday.125 The organization that would eventually emerge was both organized for violence and voluntary.

The Sons of Liberty consisted of an elected executive with a president, André

Ouimet, a secretary, and two vice-presidents. The society was divided into six sections, based on the neighbourhoods of Montreal, with each section having a leader. The organizing committee had also taken the time to decide on a society motto: “En avant!”126

The society held a general meeting on the first Monday of each month which, according to historian Elinor Kyte Senior, “was an opportunity to discuss the affairs of the province and to read newspapers aloud to those members unable to read.”127 Amédée Papineau noted that the Sons of Liberty had opened “des écoles politique et des chambres de lecture.”128 The Sons worked to establish branches of the society elsewhere, however, outside Montreal they were only successful in establishing one at La Prairie. Amédée

Papineau claimed the Sons had a membership of two thousand; however there are only reports of between six hundred to one thousand members at the largest gathering. Like many organizations, there was a discrepancy between active members and membership on paper.129

125 Writing about a year after the fact, Amédée Papineau was unsure of the precise date of the meeting. For Papineau, it was at this meeting that the Sons of Liberty came into being. According to Thomas Storrow Brown—writing much later than Papineau—the Sons of Liberty already existed before the meeting. According to his memoirs, Brown had been contemplating a “young men’s party” since June 1837. At the end of August 1837, Brown learned of the Sons of Liberty, who were already in existence and joined them. According to Papineau, Brown was not a member of the original committee. Papineau; Journal, 66–67; Thomas Storrow Brown, 1837, My Connection with it (Montreal: Raoul Renault, 1898), 16. See also Greer, Patriots and the People. 295-296. 126 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 17; Amedée Papineau, 67-68. 127 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 17-18. 128 Papineau, Journal, 69. 129 Ibid. 69; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 17-18. 72

As for its military nature, each one of the neighbourhood section chiefs acted as a colonel and each of the sections was to double as a battalion. There would be captains and sub-officers under the colonels and the six battalions could be subdivided into companies. Besides meeting to read newspapers and discuss current affairs, the Sons of

Liberty also met for military training. One of those appointed a general, Thomas Storrow

Brown, described what was meant by military training in his later memoir: “We called our members for parade, but there was no division into companies, or appointed sub- officers, or arms, or ‘drill.’ In our public address we only called the young men of the

Provinces to know their strength by organizing, and being prepared to assist for independence at some future day.”130 However, Amédée Papineau viewed what the Sons were doing as drilling. According to him: “Le dimanche, toutes les sections se réunissaient et étaient drillées publiquement, mais sans armes, aux environs de la ville.

Dans la semaine, chaque section se drillait dans des maisons et cours privée.”131

The Sons of Liberty thoroughly blended its deliberate and para-military incarnations. The most violent confrontation involving the Sons of Liberty bears this out.

During their monthly meeting on November 6, 1837 individuals began to throw stones over the wall into the courtyard where the Sons were meeting and, according to Amédée

Papineau, “to take care of our assailants. In an instant roles were changed. Our president,

André Ouimet left the chair. The orator, [Thomas Storrow] Brown, became the commandant and gave his orders. Our peaceful section chiefs became colonels and the sections battalions.” With this change complete, the Sons of Liberty launched themselves

130 Brown, 1837, 20. Brown was remembering that the address of the Sons of Liberty was directed not only at Lower Canada but the entirety of British North America. 131 Papineau, Journal, 69. 73

at their harassers.132 The transition from political to military association was to, Amédée

Papineau, seamless.

This action resulted in a major riot. After the riot, Amédée Papineau recounted how the Sons defended property, in this case the house of his father that was under threat of attack from Montreal constitutionalists. Around 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, about fifteen members of the Sons of Liberty arrived, at 9:00 they barricaded the doors. Using the dining room as the headquarters of the operation, which had been filled with all sorts of armaments, they posted sentries in the rooms that looked out onto the street, changing shift at each half hour, keeping up the watch until around midnight. According to

Amédée Papineau “C’était une vie de camp et toute militaire.”133 State theorists categorize the defence of property as one of the main purposes of government. The need to accomplish this outside of state forms points to a lack of legitimacy of the existing state and an effort to construct a new order in place of it.134

The press also carried news of new organizations established in the rural regions outside Montreal that assumed a role previously occupied by the state. In early October the local patriote Permanent Committee in the County of Two Mountains resolved to empower “juges de paix et amiable compositeur.” Here things were truly revolutionary.

As Greer states, “rather than complaining about the current government, people were

132 Thomas Storrow Brown papers quoted in Senior, Redcoats and Patriots, 45. 133 Papineau, Journal, 81-82. 134 However, speaking of the depositions of habitants in the aftermath of the insurrectionary failure, Senior noted that “very rarely did habitants or insurgent chiefs claim they took up arms to protect their ‘religion, women, children and property.’” Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 154. Three points emerge from this: First, now that they had failed, those making depositions did not want to publicize how they fought for things that challenged state order. Second, Senior’s observation would apply only to those making depositions from rural areas as opposed to those from Montreal. Third, recurring themes in these depositions were undoubtedly not the same as those in the press in this period. 74

attempting to organize a new one with completely different foundations.”135 This organizing spread outside of the Two Mountains region with the Great Meeting of the

Confederation of the Six Counties. At that meeting in late October 1837, representatives of the counties of Richelieu, Saint Hyacinthe, Rouville, Chambly, Verchères, and Acadie resolved to follow the example set by the County of Two Mountains and begin to organize a new justice system.136 In fact, one article in the Quebec Gazette alleged a link between habitant mob violence and new paramilitary voluntary societies by tying rural mob violence into an organized conspiracy. The editor claimed “the outrages, loss of life, and destruction of property which have occurred in some parts of the district of Montreal, are not the effect of temporary and local popular excitement, but the result of a deliberate system, adopted for the purpose of over-awing the peaceable and loyal inhabitants, and forcing them to join in the views of the revolutionary faction at Montreal.” These societies, the reader was told, “have been resorted to in all countries by those who mediated rebellion and treason.” The article took aim at their perceived illegitimacy: “the committees lately formed, or rather the self-constituted revolutionary societies”. Echoing similar refrains about aims and consequences, the same article continued that “They now want nothing but the possession of power, to subject the heretofore peaceable and happy inhabitants of this province to all the horors of a French revolution.”137

Upper Canadian reformers were also forming similar types of associations as existing deliberative associations took on military organizing. A joint meeting on

135 Greer, Patriots and the People, 221-225. 136 Initially there were to be representatives of five counties, however representation from Acadie who “joined at the last minute.” Greer, Patriots and the People, 226-228. Jean-Paul Bernard comp. Assemblées publique, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838 (Montreal: vlb éditeur, 1988), 268 (Resolution 4). 137 Quebec Gazette copied in the Cobourg Star 19 October 1837 p2 c4. 75

November 11 of two political unions, Number 1 covering South Uxbridge and Number 2 covering parts of Pickering and Markham passed a resolution calling for every man in the township to get a good rifle.138 Such a resolution challenged the state monopoly on force.

Based on store inventories, Douglas McCalla argues that while there was a “heritage” of firearms from pioneering, gun ownership was “not universal” and there was a diminishing prevalence of guns with settlement. In McCalla’s samples those who bought the most powder and shot were listed as “Indian.” Moreover, while country stores were not monopolies and Upper Canadians could have purchased a wide variety of goods at them, firearms would have been expensive and possibly would have had to be bought in town.139

Finally, arming outside of the militia for political purposes was a challenge to the state. Already there was a history of confiscation and regulation of firearms from those of questionable loyalty. There were already provisions against firing guns in a number of urban areas in British North America.140 The constitutionalist Patriot reflected the disturbed reaction to these newly armed groups. Thomas Dalton was flabbergasted at what habitants were doing and how Mackenzie was supporting them. Dalton wrote “that is, at the command of Papineau, assembling ARMED WITH MUSKETS!!! and for what?

138 Constitution 29 November 1837 p1 c6-7. 139 Douglas McCalla, “Upper Canadians and Their Guns: An Exploration via Country Store Accounts (1808-61),” Ontario History 97 (2005): 123. McCalla, Consumers in the Bush: Shopping in Rural Upper Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 101-103. McCalla, “‘We aint ‘gentlemen” merchants’: The Country Retailer in Upper Canada” History of Retailing and Consumption, 1 no. 2 (2015): 141. McCalla, Consumers in the Bush, 101. 140 R. Blake Brown, Arming and Disarming: A History of Gun Control in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 25-28. See as well Rainer Baehre “Trying the Rebels: Emergency Legislation and Colonial Executive’s Overall Legal Strategy in the Upper Canadian Rebellion” in F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright, eds. Canadian State Trials Vol 2.: Rebellion and Invasion in the Canadas, 1837-1839 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2002), 41–61. 76

why McKenzie tells us “to resist and throw off British Colonial Tyranny”!!!”.141 In another instance, a constitutionalist meeting in London echoed similar sentiments that rather than an expression of public opinion, armed organization by opponents unnaturally stifled it. The constitutionalists charged that an organization of armed men, assembled by reform notable John Talbot, had formed in the south of the Township of Yarmouth who were “pledged to hold themselves in readiness” and travel with Talbot to his meeting around the township.142 One of the resolutions at the London meeting decried that some persons from Yarmouth Township came to public meetings “unlawfully armed with loaded firearms and other dangerous weapons, for the avowed purpose of carrying their measures at such meetings by force and preventing a free expression of public opinion.”

The next resolution prophesized that if the government did not put down this “organized and armed body” either the majority must have to submit to this “mob” or bloodshed would ensue.143 Although there appears to have been no Upper Canadian statute that would have made such actions illegal, in 1820 Britain had passed a law against organizing and training militarily and in the aftermath of the Rebellion the Province of

Canada implemented laws in 1842 and 1843 to prohibit guns from polling places and public meetings.144

It was not only in Yarmouth Township that reformers were already putting such organizing into effect. William Lyon Mackenzie recounted in his newspaper a meeting in

York Township where “old loyalists and boys from the 79th [regiment] and other glorious

141 Patriot 7 July 1837 p2 c3-4. 142 London Gazette 28 October 1837 p3c1-3. 143 Ibid. 28 October 1837 p3 c2. 144 R. Blake Brown, 25-26. Brown notes the following dates:1842 for legislation on guns around polls, 1843 for legislation on guns around public meetings. 77

corps, directed the movements of the loyal sons of liberty.” At the meeting, “The Yonge

Street Lads” fired a feu de joie in honour of Papineau.145 Here organizing reformers assumed another state function and ritual as a way to build a new patriot order.

Newspapers of the period carried news of feu de joies fired off by the militia in honour of state events such as the arrival of a governor.146 Here, the Constitution covered non-state ones as if they were official. Voluntarist values were deeply held by both constitutionalist and patriot, Upper and Lower Canadian. Both turned to these tools as the natural step in defending rights if the state could not guarantee their protection.

Liberal justifications in the press

The use of the voluntary benchmark of broad-based attendance for gauging the success of associating extended even to those voluntary associations that challenged the state order. Commenting on the accusations that some in the British Rifle Corps were open to plotting murder, the Montreal Gazette declared that:

we cannot use language sufficiently strong to give our complete and positive denial, to a statement which appears in Thursday’s Minerve. In alluding to the last meeting of the British Rifle Corps, a correspondent of that journal says, “it would appear that a proposition was made by the most fanatical among them, to arm themselves and divide into parties of fifteen to twenty, enter into the houses of the principal citizens and destroy them, under the idea that such a massacre would have the effect of exciting fears in the Canadian ranks, and particularly in the country.” None but a madman or an idiot could believe such a tale, and nothing but the most inveterate hatred to the character and honour

145 Constitution 15 November 1837 p3 c2. 146 Kingston Chronicle and Gazette 26 May 1838 p2 c3-4. 78

of BRITONS, could attribute such blood thirsty feelings to upright patriotic citizens.147

Here the patriote attack on the British Rifle Corps centred on both the Corps using murder under the cover of darkness and the desire to establish exclusive ethnic privilege.

The Gazette then responded by accusing the patriotes and the Minerve of being engaged in ethnic exclusivity themselves due to its “hatred” of Britons. The passage reified the

Briton-Canadien dichotomy in Lower Canadian politics, something that historian Elinor

Kyte Senior noted constitutionalists did to the detriment of building a political movement that included a sizeable number of moderate Canadiens.148 The Montreal Courier described the meeting to form the Sons of Liberty similarly as an unnatural combination.

It was a “France-Canadian Clique” bent on rebellion.149

Contemporaries used the press to legitimate this new militaristic organizing.

Despite the sort of criticism they faced, their rationale rested on a liberal argument concerning a right of association and right to defend one’s person, property, and rights. In their 1837 broadside addressed to the “Young Men of the North American Colonies,” the

Sons of Liberty proclaimed that “We consider that, next to the privilege of acting for himself, man possesses, from the very foundation of society, that of uniting his energies with those of his fellow citizens for all purposes of mutual interest, or defence; and that, therefore, the right of association is as sacred and inalienable, as the right of personal liberty.”150

147 Montreal Gazette January 16 1836 p2 c5. 148 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 12. 149 Courier quoted in the Niagara Reporter 14 September 1837 p2 c3. 150 BAnQ, “Address of the Sons of Liberty, of Montréal to the Young Men of the North American Colonies.” 79

In response to the complaint from the London Gazette that reformers in Yarmouth had organized themselves into appearing at meetings armed, Mackenzie copied the resolution and was quick to point out that “It is lawful to carry weapons of defence, and in the case of the reformers it became necessary.”151 This necessity was brought on, according to Mackenzie, by militia captains and local Justices of the Peace organizing groups to attack reformers and by death threats against Mackenzie and other leading reformers by Thomas Dalton in the Patriot. Indeed, in July 1837 Dalton had published a thinly veiled threat about “the high price of HEMP” that would soon be announced after

Mackenzie started a speaking tour.152

To the protection of personal safety endorsed by Mackenzie, constitutionalists also added a justification of the new direction in voluntary organizing through the liberal notion of the right to defend one’s property. The formal response to Earl Gosford of the

British Rifle Corps to the demand of its dissolution stated that the Corps members “had been treated as traitors, by a British Governor, for no other crime than that of rousing themselves to protect their persons and property, and to assist in maintaining the rights and privileges granted to them by the Constitution.”153

The maintenance of individual rights was the final justification for these organizations. A letter to the editor of the Montreal Gazette encouraged readers that “For the enjoyment of all your political rights . . . let your oppressors see that ye possess means to preserve them against ‘a world in arms’.”154 In Upper Canada, a joint meeting

151 Constitution 1 November p3 c5. 152 Patriot 28 July 1837 p2 c5. In the context of the violence against him, this was not fanciful thinking on the part of Mackenzie. See Wilton, Popular Politics, 188-193. 153 Montreal Gazette 21 January 1836 p2 c6; see also Montreal Gazette 13 February 1836 p3 c1. 154 Ibid. 5 December 1835 p3 c4. 80

on November 11, 1837 of the political unions of Uxbridge, Pickering, and Markham passed a resolution “that every man in this township who has not got a good rifle, do forthwith prepare himself with one as we do intend to maintain our political rights inviolate.” Yet again, this sentiment was not an outgrowth of a desire for violence, but presented rather out of the common belief in associating as the route for mutual improvement, in this case a self-defence of rights. Echoing the belief in the benefits of benevolent associations, the resolution continued: “brother reformers, be encouraged, be true to each other, and be united, as union is strength.” These men were still engaged with the public sphere even while stockpiling weapons as their next resolution thanked the editors of the liberal presses in Canada “for their able opposition of the present state of our public affairs.”155 Not only was it important to publicize organizing in the press, but also to have a sympathetic, allied, or affiliated press was very important to this organizing. As will be seen in Chapter 3, organizing groups began to specify not only

“liberal presses” but specific papers that formed a new group of radial papers. Since new organizations turned older liberal notions of organizing and voluntarism towards military preparations and a challenge to the existing state order with a new one, so too a more rights-based language was adopted by both constitutionalists and, less surprisingly, patriotes.156

155 Constitution 29 November 1837 p1 c6-7. 156 E.A. Heaman argues that a conservative turn to rights-based language occurred after the hegemony of liberalism. See E. A Heaman, “Rights Talk and the Liberal Order Framework,” in Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution eds. Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 147-175. 81

Rebellion

Before the military confrontations traditionally seen as the start of the Rebellion, organizing along such lines in the Canadas had come to an end. The November 6, 1837 riot between the Sons of Liberty and the Doric club was the beginning of the end for this type of voluntary organizing and its close relationship to the press. Brown was wounded; the Vindicator was destroyed. Patriote military preparations increased, but the Montreal patriote leaders, including those of the Sons of Liberty, began to look to the countryside.

Within a week, Brown, Amédée Papineau, O’Callaghan and others had left for the relative safety of the Montreal hinterland. 157 Within 10 days of the riot, on November 16,

British authorities had had enough. Patriote organizing with the Sons of Liberty was enough of a challenge to state order to be threatening. In the days that followed, others associated with the patriot press and those associated with the Sons were apprehended or fled in the face of arrest.158 For constitutionalists, organizing would continue, but it would now be under the auspices of the state. The Doric Club and the Montreal Cavalry (a sort of amateur police force) became official appendages of the state military apparatus.

According to Deschamps, “la censure vice-royale à l’encontre du B[ritish] R[ifle] C[orps] a été effectivement levée devant l’ampleur imprévue des désordres civils.”159 The space for such organizing was also becoming limited in Upper Canada too. The last issue of

Mackenzie’s Constitution appeared in conjunction with the last one of the Correspondent and Advocate on November 29. By December 3, those aware of Mackenzie’s plans for a

157 Greer, Patriots and the People, 298; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 51. 158 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 51-53. 159 Greer, Patriots and the People, 297; Deschamps, La rébellion, 81 and 200. 82

rising had heard rumours of looming arrests and a militia call out.160 Organizing that remained tied to voluntary associations was shut down by the state as the challenge moved to physical coercion itself.

Conclusion

Military organizing was attempted by the same means as other organizations in the public sphere and was also encouraged as a means to influence public opinion. Four days after the 1835 call for action in Montreal Gazette, the paper reported that members of the Constitutional Association were following the executive committee’s recommendation and were forming an organization as an “imposing display of moral determination and physical force” to demonstrate their resolve to the government. In this case contemporaries treated militarized organizations as part of public opinion: marching with a gun showed how strongly many believed in a given idea and the ability to agitate for it outside state forms.

By November 1837, both Upper and Lower Canada contained a number of armed voluntary associations which helped to set the stage for the Rebellion of the next two months. Unlike previous studies that have traced the violence of the Rebellion to conservative mob violence, these companies—and their threatening potential for serious violence—emerged as offshoots of larger voluntary organizations. The Rebellion then, can be seen, in part, as contemporaries pushing and testing the boundaries of voluntary organizing rather than as violent interlude in the development of civil society in the

Canadas. Moreover, the formation of liberal voluntary associations that were also

160 Read and Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837, xli. 83

militarized challenges older notions of what constitutes liberal voluntary organizing and suggests a much more central role for violence in the history of civil society.161 Finally, the use of military organizing as a tool to sway public opinion hints at a more complex relationship between violence and democracy. An allied press was essential to organizing the means of violence through voluntary associations. While Rebellion brought an end to this type of organizing in the Canadas, it survived through the patriot press which continued in exile. The next chapter will chart the rise of the patriot press beginning in

1836 and follow it into the United States

161 Ian Radforth also describes specific events during the Rebellion Losses Controversy which exemplify this notion. See Radforth, “Political Demonstrations and Spectacles.” 84

Chapter 3

“A powerful auxiliary in the cause:” the Rise of a Patriot Press Community

In Chapter 2, I demonstrated the importance of the press to the growth of military organizing especially in the months before the outbreak of armed conflict in the Canadas in 1837. This chapter examines the rise of a new set of newspapers in the Canadas—what

I term the patriot press—during that same period and charts its growth and change once it was forced across the border. The principal focus is on its work to build a patriot order.

The patriot press, even as it formed in the Canadas, constructed a borderland due to its extensive use of U.S. republican argument, vocabulary, and imagery. In exile, the patriot press retained its borderland nature, although the reasons for this changed. Patriot newspapers were conceptually part of a new Canadian republican borderland that bridged the boundary in an attempt to erase the geographic divide between monarchy and republic in North America. In exile, the patriot press was significant in creating a public community of likeminded individuals united in a republican vision for the Canadas. Once in the United States, the borderland for these papers and those associated with them became a physical one. While patriots had worked to eliminate the border, now the permanence of that border allowed for the continued survival of patriot voices. In the

United States, however, the patriot press was defined by a greater commitment to radical politics than it had been in the Canadas. Subsequent chapters analyze the continuing work of the patriot press to build a patriot order now in exile. Chapter 4 analyses how the patriot press in the United States fostered a unique borderland public sphere in its conflict with constitutionalist editors in the Canadas and how, with the rhetoric it used, it also 85

sought to set boundaries around the movement in exile. Chapter 5 investigates how the patriot press in the United States was instrumental in ongoing patriot organizing, including directly encouraging continued patriot violence.

This chapter intervenes in past scholarship in two ways. First, it emphasizes the importance of a borderland: a collection of papers that transcended the border through common republican argument, vocabulary, and imagery and then as a community that was defined by the border and that remained cohesive and somewhat separate from the rest of the U.S. press once it was forced into exile. Scholars have viewed the 1837-8

Rebellion as silencing radical reform voices in the developing British North American public sphere.1 However, such a national emphasis misses how patriot newspapers and public meetings continued beyond November 1837. Newly published newspapers, edited by Canadian refugees or U.S. residents, formed all along the border from Michigan to

Vermont.2 These papers remained accessible to and engaged with those in the Canadas. A fuller picture of the breadth and continuity of the Rebellion thus emerges if one centers the study along the Canadas-U.S. border. These newspapers, as will be seen in Chapter 4, continued to engage actively with constitutionalist papers in Upper and Lower Canada in debates over the future of British North America. Moreover, editors, filibusters, and refugees continued to be invested in voluntary organizing and held public meetings to raise support and funds for their cause, as will be discussed in Chapter 5.

1 Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 193; Yvan Lamonde. Histoire Sociale des Idées au Québec, Volume 1 1760-1896 (Montréal: Fides, 2000), 247; J. I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812- 1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 2 I chose the term ‘refugee’ as it was the contemporary terminology patriot exiles from British North America gave themselves. I will use it to refer to those who considered themselves part of the patriot exile community as opposed to the broader community of exiles from the Canadas. This broader group included both those involved in radical political agitation in the Canadas as well as those not involved with the Rebellion but who left out of fear of wider political retribution. 86

Second, this chapter puts the press at the centre of the patriot movement in exile, rather than secret paramilitary organizations such as the Hunters’ Lodges, which have attracted significant scholarly attention. While the Hunter fraternalism and ritual constitute an important part of the continuing Rebellion, they should not stand in for the wider patriot movement. It was in the press that patriots learned about meetings and filibustering expeditions, read pro-patriot literature, and exchanged news on favourable developments from their perspective in British North America. The press created a community of editors and worked to form a broader patriot community by giving cohesiveness to the movement in exile that it was otherwise lacking.

The Patriot Press

The importance of patriot newspapers is evident from their number and expansion in exile as illustrated in the following table. The table excludes papers for which no issues are extant.

Table 1: Patriot newspapers (organized by date of founding) Newspaper First Issue Frequency Last Issue of Editions Minerve 9 November 1826 Semi-weekly 20 November 1837 Vindicator 12 December 1828 Semi-weekly 7 November 1837 Constitution 4 July 1836 Weekly 6 December 1837 Libéral/Liberal 17 June 1837 Semi-weekly 20 November 1837 Lewiston Telegraph3 Mid-late 18364 Weekly 1839 Detroit Morning Post 3 July 1837 Daily5 1838 1838 Weekly “early part of 1840”6

3 Lewiston also had the Frontier Sentinel published in 1837 by Thomas P. Scovill. This was possibly another patriot paper but one that has left no known issues. For a fuller discussion, see Table 2. 4 The Telegraph was founded in 1836 and described as lasting for three years. For it to be still extant in May 1839 would mean that it commenced publication no later than May 1836. S. N. D. North, The Newspaper and Periodical Press (Washington: US Census office, 1884), 398. 5 Silas Farmer notes that the paper “would be appropriately described as a daily issued at irregular intervals.” Silas Farmer, and Wayne County and Early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of Past and Present (Detroit: Silas Farmer and Company, 1890), 673. 87

Canadian Patriot7 22 December 1837a Weekly 1838 Buffalonian 25 December 1837 Daily 5 March 1838 5 March 1838 Triweekly 19 January 1839? 1840 2 June 1838 Weekly Estafette8 2 January 1838 Semi-weekly 1839 Budget 21 January 1838a Daily 3 February 1838 Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 May 1838 Weekly 23 December 1840 Freeman’s Advocate 28 September 1838a Weekly 29 March 1839 Mercury 16 November 1838a Semi-weekly ? 21 November 1838 Daily 19 January 1839 1 December 1838 Weekly 19 January 1839 Oswego Bulletin Fall 1838 As needed?9 ? Patriot Express Fall 1838 ? ? Bald Eagle 23 November 1838a Semi-weekly “early in 1839”10 Mercury ? November 1838a Daily “spring” 184011 and Buffalonian 5 January 1839a Weekly ? Semi-Weekly Patriot’s Friend 8 December 1838a Weekly 1839 Canadian 1 January 183912 ? ? North American 10 April 1839 Weekly 12 August 1841 Patriote Canadien 7 August 1839 Weekly 5 February 1840 Spirit of ’76 17 August 1839 Weekly Only issue 19 August 1839 Daily 17 October 1840 Volunteer 17 April 1841 Weekly Late January 184213 Truth 3 May 1841 Daily ? Sublime Patriot 15 November 1841a Weekly Early 1842 a indicates that the date of first issue has been derived from later issues.

6 The Detroit Morning Post merged with the Craftsman in January 1839. Ibid., 673. 7 Blanchard also published the Democrat in Derby Line, Vermont by July 1838 and the Montreal Express in Montreal by that fall. The Express was quickly shut down by authorities. Little, Loyalties, 66. 8 Henry D. Robinson announced the prospectus for his New York Estafette in December 1837. 9 Oswego Bulletin 20 November 1838 p1 c4. 10 David Dirck Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski, eds. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 247. 11 Guy H. Salisbury, “Early History of the Press of Erie County” in Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society Volume 2 (Buffalo: Bigelow Brothers, 1879), 208. 12 The date on the masthead of the Canadian’ first issue is “January, 1 1838.” However, the documents and articles in that issue refer to later events such as the and include the dates “December 1838” and “June 12 1838.” Other patriot papers noted the start of the Canadian as being in December 1838. Thus, the newspaper probably began on 1 January 1839 and the date was a major typographical error. 13 Facing financial difficulties, William Lyon Mackenzie last published the Volunteer on a regular basis on November 17, 1841. In late January 1842, Mackenzie issued a small extra of the Volunteer, disclaiming any further interest in the patriot movement. In a unique move amongst patriot editors, Mackenzie then restarted the Volunteer but as a “liberal political journal” rather than a patriot paper. However, Mackenzie only published two issues of this paper: 25 April and 10 May 1843. I did not review these issues because of the paper ceasing to be patriot. Lillian F. Gates, After the Rebellion: The Later Years of William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996), 97-99. 88

The papers listed have been defined as the patriot press by two main characteristics: first, the papers embraced immediate independence for the Canadas from

British control and, second had a strong dedication to republicanism as well. Thus, even when initially printed in the Canadas, patriot papers contained a borderland element in that they wished to erase the existing boundary between republic and monarchy in North

America.

The development of the patriot press began in the Canadas and continued in the

United States. In the Canadas, it was a response to actions by British and colonial administrators that radicalized a segment of the reform and patriote movements. July 4,

1836 saw the publication of a new paper edited by William Lyon Mackenzie, the

Constitution. The Constitution was by no means the first paper, or even the first paper begun by Mackenzie, advocating for reform in the Canadas. However, the Constitution is best viewed as the vanguard of a new set of newspapers, which I term the patriot press.

Beginning with the Constitution, the community grew to include the established Lower

Canadian newspapers the Vindicator and Minerve. These two Montreal-based papers became part of the patriot press at the latest from April 1837 in response to Lord John

Russell’s Ten Resolutions. The June 1837 founding of a new paper for the patriotes of

Quebec City, the Libéral/Liberal, rounded out the patriot press in the Canadas.

After forswearing journalism, Mackenzie re-entered the profession with the

Constitution only weeks after a loss in the highly controversial June 1836 election for the

Upper Canadian House of Assembly.14 A number of historians have noted the historical

14 , The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, [1956] 1977), 143-144. 89

significance of the election. More specifically, Carol Wilton, Colin Read, Ronald Stagg, and Allan Greer have all noted the important role of the election in the radicalization of part of the reform movement and especially of Mackenzie.15 However, it appears that the

“final straw” for more advanced reformers in Upper Canada, as for Lower Canada, was the Russell Resolutions.16 Historian Ronald Stagg notes an increasingly radical tone in the Constitution beginning in April 1837, soon after news of the Russell resolutions reached Toronto.17 While William LeSueur notes the Constitution’s growing stance in favour of separation from Great Britain, Stagg cautions against viewing the Constitution as too radical, too soon, concluding that Mackenzie was not an advocate of armed separation from Britain until late September or early October 1837.18 In Stagg’s view, the evidence “is contradictory” as to what Mackenzie meant by “resistance” in the

Constitution before that time.19 Nevertheless, Mackenzie included such language as early as mid-October 1836. As will be seen later, Mackenzie used blatant American republican

15 Sean T. Cadigan sees this election as important for changes to campaigning and paternalism. David Mills sees it as the start of moderate Tory and reform forces coming together. Sean T. Cadigan, “Paternalism and Politics: Sir Francis Bond Head, the Orange Order, and the Election of 1836” Canadian Historical Review 72 no. 3 (1991): 319-347 and David Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784-1850 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988) 3-8, 44-90, 106. See also Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture, 179–183; Colin Read and Ronald Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), xxx; and Allan Greer, “1837–38: Rebellion Reconsidered” Canadian Historical Review 76, no 1 (1995), 12. 16 Read and Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837, xxx. See also Greer, “Rebellion Reconsidered,” 13 and Jarett Henderson, “Banishment to Bermuda: Gender, Race, Empire, Independence and the Struggle to Abolish Irresponsible Government in Lower Canada,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 46, no. 92 (2013): 339. 17 Ronald Stagg, “The Yonge Street Rebellion: An Examination of the Social Background and a Re- Assessment of the Events” (PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1976), 31. See also Ibid., 30. Kilbourn, Firebrand, 150. William Dawson LeSueur, William Lyon Mackenzie: A Reinterpretation, ed. A. B. McKillop (Toronto: MacMillan, 1979), 270. Although written in 1908, the work was not published, due to a 1913 court injunction, until 1979. See Clifford G. Holland, “William Dawson LeSueur,” DCB. 18 Stagg, “Yonge Street Rebellion,” 4; LeSueur, Mackenzie, 279; see also Kilbourn, Firebrand. 19 Stagg, “Yonge Street,” 32. 90

symbols as emblems of the paper from the Constitution’s founding.20 Therefore, the founding of the Constitution should be viewed as the beginning of this process of radicalization for Mackenzie and consequently the beginning of the patriot press.

Lower Canada had a long-established campaign for redress of colonial grievances supported by allied newspapers. The Patriote party had roots that extended back to 1805 and both the Vindicator and the Minerve had an extensive tradition of demanding redress and running afoul of the colonial administration. Publishers Ludger Duvernay of the

Minerve and of the Vindicator had spent time in prison in 1832 for articles criticizing the Legislative Council.21 To incorporate the Vindicator and the Minerve into the patriot press only from 1837 is not to ignore such a tradition of radical reform, but to recognize the changing nature of advanced reform and the ebb and flow of patriote agitation. What transformed these two papers into patriot papers was the arrival of the

British response to the Ninety-Two Resolutions.22 Habitant patriotes singled out these papers at a large meeting on June 1, 1837 in Sainte-Scholastique with the banner “À la

Minerve, au Vindicator, à la presse libéral.”23 Also in June 1837 a new patriot paper began in Québec. Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette and Charles Hunter founded the

20 Constitution 19 October 1836 p3 c2. The issue included an article entitled “REBELLION!” The piece discussed rebels from British history (William Wallace, Robert Emmet, etc.) and how the “youth of America” were being taught Emmet’s words. See also 21 July 1836 p2 c2. 21 Jean-Marie Lebel, “Ludger Duvernay,” DCB. Louis-Georges Harvey, Le Printemps de L’Amérique française: Américanité, anticolonialisme et républicanisme dans le discours politique québécois, 1805- 1837 (Montreal: Les Éditions du Boréal, 2005); J. M. Bumsted provides a good overview of libel and sedition trials of British North American papers. See J. M. Bumsted “Liberty of the Press in Early Prince Edward Island, 1823–9” in Canadian State Trials: Law, Politics, and Security Measures, 1608-1837 Vol. 1 F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright eds. (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 1996), 522-525. 22 Henderson, “Banishment,” 339. 23 Gilles Boileau comp. 1837 et les patriotes de Deux-Montagnes: Les voix de la mémoire (Montreal: Méridien, 1998), 154. 91

Libéral/Liberal to replace Étienne Parent’s Canadien and John Neilson’s Quebec Gazette after both abandoned the patriote movement due to its increasing radicalization.24

Proudly standing for the patriot cause, these papers displayed their belief in independence for the Canadas and republicanism, in both text and visuals. Patriot newspapers included republican arguments, vocabulary, and imagery from the United

States and symbols reflecting their voluntarist values. Use of these symbols would continue in exile. The focus on the borderland nature of the patriot press is not to deny the long history of cross-border copying of news and commentary or of republican rhetoric in the Canadas. A number of historians have pointed to the long tradition of

American news and information being copied by papers in the Canadas.25 However, the extensive use of U.S. news and symbols and their deployment as a near-open challenge to

British administration demonstrate a marked difference between the wider press in the

Canadas and the borderland nature of the patriot press community.

The republicanism of the patriot press community had deep roots and early manifestations. In Upper Canada, reformers in St. Thomas held a celebration for the 4th of

July in 1832 that was threatening enough to be attacked by constitutionalists.26 As its most distinguishing feature, the later patriot press in the Canadas consistently deployed strident republican texts to bolster support for independence and thus to erase the

24 Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes: The Rebellions in Lower Canada 1837-38 (Stittsville, ON: Canada’s Wings, 1985),15. Sonia Chassé, Rita Girard-Wallot, and Jean-Pierre Wallot, “John Neilsen,” DCB. 25 Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, [1987] 2012), 38. Jarett Henderson and Dan Horner “Introduction: British North America’s Global Age,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 46, no. 92 (2013): 267. 26 G. H. Patterson, “Asahel Bradley Lewis,” DCB. In Upper Canada, even “supporters of the government” recognized this imbalance and encouraged economic development in order to rival US growth and the adoption of US techniques. See Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, 121-124, quotation at 122. For an extensive discussion of republicanism in Lower Canadian political discourse see Harvey, Printemps. 92

monarchical-republican boundary in North America. Patriot papers chose to repeat news from the United States to attack Britain and bolster the patriot cause. For example,

Mackenzie noted that U.S. President would soon deliver his Message to Congress, which would reveal the position of the U.S. in relation to agitation in the

Canadas. Mackenzie then copied a report of a meeting in Philadelphia against British interests and influence in the United States, especially by British banks.27 Patriot papers not only celebrated the fourth of July, but also made frequent, if veiled, calls for republican liberty, often by alluding to events surrounding the American Revolution.28

The patriot press often tied these references to past revolutionary events to current political developments in the Canadas.29 In addition, the patriot press copied U.S. republican documents. Mackenzie serialized Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the

Vindicator published “Extracts from the History of the American Revolution.”30

Republican symbols and also figured prominently in the patriot press and emphasized Canadian independence, U.S. republicanism, democracy, and a belief in associationalism. The Minerve’s masthead consisted of the goddess Minerva with her

27 See Constitution 31 May 1837 p2 c7, 14 June 1837 p1 c7, 30 August 1837 p1 c2; Harvey, Printemps, 46 and 214-215; Vindicator 27 October 1837 p1 c4. 28 For the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, see for example the “fourth of July ode” published by Mackenzie, Constitution 2 August 1837 p1 c3. (Also see, later in that issue, comments on how “America complained that it was taxed, and oppressively taxed” 2 August 1837 p3 c3) 23 August 1837 p1 c2. See also the Declaration of the Six Counties published in the Minerve 30 October and 2 November 1837 as well as the Vindicator 27 October 1837 p2-3 and 31 October p2; Jean-Paul Bernard, Assemblées publiques, résolutions et déclarations de 1837-1838 / textes recueillis et présentés (Montréal: VLB éditeur et l’union des écrivains québécois, 1988), 259-285. This coverage in the Vindicator still took place even though O’Callaghan was in disfavour with some in the patriote party. See Jack Verney, O’Callaghan: The Making and Unmaking of a Rebel (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 127- 128 and Michel Ducharme, Le Concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques (1776- 1838) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 129–135. 29 For example, the first resolution of the Young Men’s Political Association of Vankleek Hill was the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. See Vindicator 11 August 1837 p3 c1 as well as Constitution 23 August 1837 p2 and 4 October 1837 p2. 30 Constitution 26 July 1837, 2 August 1837 p1 c7 and p3 c1-2, 9 August 1837 p1; Vindicator 27 October 1837 p1 c1-4. 93

owl, surrounded by rays of light pushing out to clouds to signify knowledge dispelling ignorance. Louis-Georges Harvey has noted that the Minerve’s Minerva constituted a symbol of republicanism that was as much part of a U.S. tradition as a French one.31 The

Vindicator included the motto “United We Stand – Divided We Fall.”32 Le Libéral/The

Liberal used the Latin motto “Salus Populi, Suprema Lex Esto,” which is generally translated as “let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.”33 Mackenzie did not have a set motto for the Constitution. Rather, he included a number of long quotations that he would change after a number of issues.34 On one run of issues, Mackenzie included a motto, printed in bold letters, “A Long Pull—a Strong Pull—and a Pull

Altogether” showing a continued commitment to collective organizing and common purpose.35 Mackenzie’s most striking symbol, however, appears to be a modification of the State Seal of Missouri as the page two masthead for the Constitution as well as on the top of his notice for the August 1837 reform meetings in the northern parts of York and

Simcoe counties.36 Containing both the mottos “United We Stand Divided We Fall” and

“Salus Populi, Suprema Lex Esto,” the arms of Missouri combined two mottos adopted by the patriot press. Mackenzie appears to have used a version of the state seal denuded of the twenty-four stars signifying Missouri as the 24th state and the United States federal

31 Louis-Georges Harvey, “Rome et la république dans la culture politique des Patriotes” La Culture des Patriotes, Charles-Philippe Courtois et Julie Guyot, eds. (Québec: Septentrion),150-155. 32 See for example Vindicator 3 January 1834 p2 c4 and January 2 1835 p2 c3 . 33 This is the official translation by the State of Missouri (http://www.sos.mo.gov/symbol/seal). 34 Mackenzie placed these quotations above the paper’s masthead. 35 Constitution 2 August 1837 p3 c3. 36 For an example of Mackenzie’s early use of this symbol in his newspaper, see Constitution 21July 1836 p2 c2. For Mackenzie’s later use of the symbol in relation to calls for public meetings, see Constitution 26 July 1837 p3 c7. I have not found a contemporary paper’s comment on the symbol or his use of it. 94

from the right quadrant.37 Such repurposing of American symbols also demonstrates the extent to which these patriot papers were part of a republican borderland, hovering on the edge of what could have been seen as sedition in the

Canadas. While constitutionalists also used a similar language of combination (such as

“when bad men conspire, good men must unite”) the use of such language by the patriot press reveals a republican connotation, fundamentally at odds with monarchy. It also pointed to the continued belief by the patriots in the positive benefits of voluntary organizing.

Figure 1: Mackenzie’s Missouri seal (L) and unmodified (R)

In the United States, patriot papers continued to make heavy use of U.S. republican texts, content, symbols, and mottos that promoted collective organizing and unity. Emphasis on American republican language in the patriot press in exile is the subject of the next chapter, but such visuals represented one of the strongest means by which to convey republican beliefs, given that not all who accessed newspapers may have

37 Unmodified Seal from D. L. Webster, Webster's Encyclopedia of Useful Information and World's Atlas (Chicago: Ogilvie and Gillett, 1889), 277. 95

been literate.38 Multiple patriot papers had variations of “American Eagle” imagery. The

Freeman’s Advocate simply used a more lifelike rendering of the Great Seal of the

United States: an eagle with a shield clutching olive branches and arrows.39 Others added their own modifications. The Bald Eagle’s masthead consisted of an eagle holding a ribbon emblazoned with “E Pluribus Unum” and above, on later issues, the motto

“Liberty and Equality.”40 Duvernay’s Patriote Canadien also featured an eagle, this time clutching a ribbon with the words “L’Union fait la Force.”41 The Lewiston Telegraph printed an eagle, wings spread, above the motto “FREEDOM TO THE OPPRESSED.”42

The Mercury and Buffalonian, edited by Thomas Low Nichols, included the slogan “a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together” in an issue, the same slogan Mackenzie had used in his Toronto Constitution.43

Two of the most elaborate uses of patriot images were found in the Spirit of ’76 and the Volunteer. Patriot editor Edward Alexander Theller emblazoned his Spirit of ’76 with a large masthead containing multiple American , an eagle, and two allegorical supporters around a portrait of George Washington. One of the allegorical supporters drapes an unidentified —possibly patriot—over drums.44 William Lyon Mackenzie’s

Volunteer included an elaborate masthead with a scene of Navy Island in the Niagara

River with the Caroline burning. After his flight to the United States, Mackenzie and other patriots had occupied that Upper Canadian island as a republican foothold in the

38 McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791– 1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 133-134. 39 Freeman’s Advocate 11 January 1839 p4 c3. 40 See Bald Eagle 28 December 1838 p1 issue for this addition. 41 See for example Le Patriote Canadien 7 August 1839. 42 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p2 c3. 43 Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p3 c3. 44 A flag draped over drums could be a sign of mourning associated with a military drumhead service in the field. 96

Canadas. Eventually the British burned the American ship, the Caroline, supplying them from New York. Prominently included was the Navy Island flag of twin stars for Upper and Lower Canada and below the word “Liberty.”45 One of the last patriot newspapers to emerge, Thomas Jefferson Sutherland’s Sublime Patriot, strongly mirrored the republican visuals of the first, Mackenzie’s Constitution. Sutherland’s paper contained a modified version of the state above the motto “Light, Liberty and

Truth,” harkening back to the modified state seal of Missouri deployed by Mackenzie six years before.46

The advocacy of republicanism for the Canadas was also evident in the very titles of newspapers, especially of those published in the United States. While Minerva could be a republican symbol and naming a paper the Constitution could be a subtle call for a written one, patriot papers in the United States were replete with the words “Canadian,”

“Patriot,” and other titles suggesting a more direct association with the American

Revolution, the Bald Eagle and Spirit of ’76 being the most obvious.

Beyond visual support for U.S. republicanism, patriot papers attacked monarchy more generally. Demonstrating a continued commitment to the public sphere, Mackenzie printed in the Constitution the prospectus of a new constitutionalist paper in Toronto, the

Royal Standard. However, when Mackenzie printed the royal coat of arms that accompanied the prospectus, he did so with the coat of arms turned on its side. This was a

45 See the Volunteer 22 May 1841 and 10 July 1841 for its frontispiece of the burning Caroline. Mackenzie had two engravings in his 24 July 1841 issue: In the first, a dead man lies on a wharf with the Caroline burning in the background. In the second, “THE CA” and “ROLINE” flank in huge letters on each side of a depiction of the hanging of and . 46 Sublime Patriot 14 February 1842 p2 c2. In Sutherland’s coat of arms, the “supporters” flanking the shield are switched from how they are traditionally depicted: the woman with the Phyrygian liberty cap appears on the right rather than on the left. Newspaper publishing was one of many of ventures by Sutherland. See Lillian F. Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB. For the official description of the New York State coat of arms, see http://www.dos.ny.gov/info/pdfs/CoatofArmsDescriptionSheet.pdf. 97

major sign of disrespect to monarchical authority.47 In a similar vein, the Minerve attacked the monarchy in France, notably Louis Philippe and Charles X, arguing that the

French Revolution of 1830 had only increased tyranny and suffering.48 Critiques of monarchy by the patriot press once exiled in the United States will be covered in the next chapter. It is worthy of note here that interest in the Revolution of 1830 continued with

Mackenzie publishing an article “How the tyrant Charles X was put down.”49 A republican press had begun in the Canadas.

The Patriot Press in Relation to Other Radical Newspapers in the Canadas

In the Canadas, the four patriot newspapers were evolving into a distinctly patriot press, but still interacted extensively with other papers. As the patriot press increased its radicalism and use of republican rhetoric and imagery, a number of reform papers turned away from such positions, including some that did so just before the outbreak of violence.

Other reform papers had not reached the level of radicalism of the patriot papers by the time of the outbreak of violence.

In Lower Canada, other reform newspapers diverged from the increasing radicalism that defined the patriot press in the Canadas. As already noted, both Étienne

Parent’s Canadien and John Neilson’s Quebec Gazette pulled away from the patriots in the face of political radicalization: Neilson in 1834 in the context of the Ninety-Two

47 Constitution 26 October 1836 p3 c6. After the outbreak of insurrection, the representation of the Royal coat of arms on its side resulted in Samuel Hart having his Plain Speaker office trashed. H. Belden, Illustrated historical atlas of the counties of Hastings and Prince Edward, Ont. (Toronto: H. Belden and Co, 1878), iii. William Renwick Riddell, “An Old Provincial Newspaper” The Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 19 (1922): 139. H. F. Gardiner, “When the ‘Plain Speaker’s’ Type was Pied, The Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 20 (1923): 87. 48 Harvey Printemps, 140. See also Yvan Lamonde. Histoire Sociale, 211. 49 Volunteer 8 May 1841 p60-62. 98

Resolutions and Parent in 1835.50 Another newspaper, the “radical” L’Echo du Pays, begun in 1833 in the patriote heartland of St. Charles, published its last issue in June

1836. Owned and initiated by the patriote seigneur Pierre-Dominique Debartzch, the paper ended as Debartzch did a major about-face and moved deep, in the words of Greer,

“into the bosom of the colonial administration.”51 Working with the second editor of

L’Echo du Pays, Jean-Baptiste Boucher-Belleville, Debartzch began Le Glaneur as a

“Journal littéraire, d’agriculture et d’industrie” to “replace” his “publication politique.”52

While Boucher-Belleville was involved in patriote activity, Greer has argued that “the change of heart” by Debartzch and others patriote-sympathetic seigneurs could be “an illustration of the general tendency among those with a major proprietary stake in any existing order to recoil at the picture of revolution.”53 The period immediately preceding the outbreak of armed insurrection was the second threshold when other radical papers stepped back from the growing radicalism of the patriot press. In November 1836

Elkanah Phelps began the Township Reformer in Stanbridge East, Lower Canada.

Surviving a constitutionalist mob in August 1837, he ended his publication on November

21, 1837 with a defence of the patriotes but “counselled” his readers against insurrection.54

The major radical paper to veer from supporting the patriot cause was the

Correspondent and Advocate in Upper Canada. It was the product of a November 1834

50 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 15; Jean-Charles Falardeau, “Étienne Parent,” DCB; Sonia Chassé, Rita Girard-Wallot, and Jean-Pierre Wallot, “John Neilson,” DCB. 51 Greer, Patriots and the People, 287; Ludwik Kos Rabcewicz Zubkowski, “Pierre-Dominique Debartzch,” DCB. 52 André Beaulieu et Jean Hamelin, La Presse québécoise des origines à nos jours, Tome I (1764-1859) (Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1973), 92. 53 Greer, Patriots and the People. 293; Louis-Philippe Audet, “Jean-Baptiste Boucher-Belleville,” DCB. 54 Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 66. 99

merger of Mackenzie’s and the Canadian Correspondent begun by

James King and William O’Grady.55 The Correspondent and Advocate was one of the most radical papers in the Canadas. However, O’Grady sold his press abruptly in

November 1837. After the sale, the Correspondent and Advocate was published “in combination with Mackenzie’s Constitution” for two issues before expiring. By then,

O’Grady had moved out of the public eye and the patriot sphere, providing military intelligence to authorities in the Canadas. As Curtis Fahey notes in his biography,

O’Grady “remained committed to the cause of reform” but not to sedition.56 In sum, while he was a radical, O’Grady did not make the jump to work actively to build a new patriot order through the press.

There were other papers in the Canadas that existed more as allied, radical reform journals, which might have become patriot had not violence broken out. The St. Thomas

Liberal was an increasingly radical paper, but by the fall of 1837 the paper still fell short of the strident republicanism characteristic of the patriot press. John Talbot had assumed editorship of the Liberal in early 1836. Only scattered issues remain from 1836 and 1837,

55 There has been a strong tendency in the historiography to link the Constitution with the Correspondent and Advocate, possibly out of past analysis that emphasized a focus of Mackenzie’s papers. For example, Stabile typifies both the Correspondent and Advocate and the Constitution as “reformer” yet identifies their publishers as extreme radicals. Juliana M. Stabile, “Toronto Newspapers 1798-1845: A Case Study in Print Culture” (PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), 204. Stabile cites the depositions of captured rebels in which they claimed that they had been radicalized by and rebelled only because of these newspapers. Many of those depositions mention “Mackenzie’s paper,” Stabile, 395. However, the Correspondent and Advocate had never been one of Mackenzie’s papers and by this point he had ended his connection with the Colonial Advocate years before. In fact, Mackenzie had sold many elements of his printing operation and had even been using new type and possibly even a new press for the Constitution. Chris Raible, W. L. Mackenzie, Printer: His Newspapers and His Presses (Toronto: Mackenzie House, Toronto Historical Board, 1989), 7; J. J. Talman, “The Printing Presses of William Lyon Mackenzie, Prior to 1837,” Canadian Historical Review 18 no. 4 (1937): 414-418. So strong is the tendency in this area that Ducharme places the beginning of the Constitution in 1834 and describes it as the successor to the Colonial Advocate after the latter’s demise that year. While the Colonial Advocate ceased in 1834, the Constitution only began in 1836, and with new equipment. Ducharme, Le Concept de Liberté, 121. 56 Curtis Fahey, “William O’Grady,” DCB. 100

but the Constitution extensively copied news from the Liberal.57 H. Orlo Miller, in his study of the press of the London area, characterized the Liberal as “violently radical.”58

However, extant issues of the Liberal gesture to a radical reform paper that continued to believe in the Canadas as part of the British Empire. To be sure, the Liberal had published a revolutionary poem in October 1836 promising to fight against despotism and slavery. Hinting at possible armed confrontation, one verse stated “we’ll rather in the conflict fall, / Than round a despot rally!”59 While this poem could hint at plans for immediate independence, other evidence suggests the Liberal stood against severing the connection with Britain and against republican symbols. For example in September 1836, the Liberal featured an advertisement of its terms including a short statement of purpose in upper-case type, which included the header “Established to advocate provincial reform—Upon British Principles.”60 This statement appears to have been more typical of the paper’s continuing outlook. In a similar vein, John Talbot was taken aback when, as secretary of a fall 1837 reform meeting in Sparta, Upper Canada, the meeting passed radical resolutions and displayed American republican symbols. After viewing a flag at that meeting featuring an eagle, six stripes, and six stars representing the provinces of

British North America, Talbot counseled readers of his paper to eschew flying such a flag

“of another country” and, in order to prevent such controversy, refrain from using banners. Talbot elaborated that this approach should be followed until such time as

57 Constitution, passim. 58 H. Orlo Miller, “The History of the Newspaper Press in London, 1830-1875” Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records, 32(1937), 116. See also Landon’s early work on the press in London. Fred Landon, “Some Early Newspapers and Newspapermen of London” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Historical Society (1927): 24-34. 59 Liberal copied in Constitution 1 November 1837 p2 c2. 60 Liberal 15 September 1836 p4 c6. 101

individuals were ready to take up arms to defend these new flags “or […] which we would like better, when such a change in the government take place, as would encourage the people to look with confidence and pride to the established banners of the Empire.”61

The newspapers of Samuel Peters Hart could also be placed in this category of veering away from open republicanism. Hart produced The Weevil with “radical tendencies.” In 1836 he began the Belleville Plain Speaker, which, according to an early local press history, was “friendly to the rebels.”62 The Plain Speaker was radical enough to be targeted in the wave of extra-legal constitutionalist violence against radical and reform papers.63 Hart’s response proved to be an interesting exception to that of other editors fleeing violence: he attempted to restart his paper in the Canadas, down the road

61 St. Thomas Liberal quoted in the Constitution 27 September 1837 p2 c2. Read notes the radical nature of some of the resolutions and describes them as “atypical” of such reform meetings. Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837–8: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982), 69. 62 Edwin C. Guillet, “The Cobourg Conspiracy,” Canadian Historical Review 18 no. 1 (1937), 32. In these cases, extant papers for the period of study have not been located by past newspaper compendiums. See J. Brian Gilchrist, comp. and ed. Inventory of Ontario Newspapers 1793-1986 (Toronto: Micromedia, 1987), 11; Belden, Illustrated historical atlas of the counties of Hastings and Prince Edward, Ont., iii. 63 It is unclear how many times Hart’s paper was subjected to destruction. Gilchrist and Fetherling note that the Plain Speaker moved to Coburg after a mob attack. Gilchrist, Inventory of Ontario Newspapers, 31 and Fetherling, Rise of the Canadian Newspaper, 24. In Cobourg, one account has the press of the Plain Speaker being thrown into Lake Ontario. However, the move back to Belleville seems voluntary rather than forced as Hart mused about the move in the pages of the Plain Speaker. H. Belden, Illustrated Historical Atlas of Northumberland and Durham Counties Ontario (reprint, Belleville: Mika, [1878] 1972), x; Riddell, “An Old Provincial Newspaper,” 141. There has been much more coverage of the riot against Hart’s second attempt to start the Plain Speaker in Belleville after its move back to Belleville from Cobourg. Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 January 1839 p268 c1. H. F. Gardiner relates the story of his father who worked on the paper in 1838, stating that the riots was due to the coat of arms on its side: H. F. Gardiner, “When the “Plain Speaker’s” Type was Pied,” 87. Others mention a riot with that same motive but do not specify the date. Belden, Illustrated atlas of Hastings and Prince Edward, iii. J. Owen Herity, “Journalism in Belleville,” Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 27 (1931): 401. Either the paper was attacked twice or these two episodes have become muddled. Guillet implies one riot but no date noting that Hart’s printing office was “destroyed by loyalists,” Guillet, “Cobourg Conspiracy,” 35. Also see Guillet for a mention of the Weevil. Fetherling contends that, with his move to Coburg, Hart “grew more moderate, or perhaps simply newsier,” which does not bear out in the surviving copies of the Cobourg Plain Speaker. Douglas Fetherling, The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990), 24; Riddell, “An Old Provincial Newspaper;” Plain Speaker 14 August 1838. 102

in Cobourg, rather than in the United States after the outbreak of insurrectionary conflict in late 1837.

Hiram Thomas founded the radical Missiskoui Post and Canadian Record in

Quebec’s Eastern Townships in 1834.64 With the outbreak of the Rebellion, Thomas fled to Vermont and constitutionalists targeted his paper for destruction. However, his paper does not seem to have made him a personal target of authorities as he was able to return to see his dying wife, Emily Rice, for the birth of their second child.65 It is hard to chart the political trajectory of the Post based on the activities of its editor. He had been quite active in earlier patriote agitation but has been described as “totalement inactif en

1837”.66 However, in 1839 in the U.S., Thomas helped found the patriot North American in Swanton, Vermont with Jackson Abraham Vail, a newly married lawyer recently called to the bar.67

Even up to November 1837, reform papers in both Canadas existed on a spectrum. The development of the patriot press was an ongoing process with some papers not fully radicalized, while others broke with radical reform in the face of that radicalism.

The outbreak of the Rebellion substantially altered this process and triggered an even

64 An excerpted article of the Missiskoui Post and Canadian Record can be found in James Reid, The Diary of a Country Clergyman: The Intimate Diary of a Nineteenth-Century Clergyman in Frelighsburg, Quebec, ed. M. E. Reisner (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 175–177. 65 Little describes the Post as “radical.” Little, 66. Stephen Kenny, “Strangers’ Sojourn: Canadian Journalists in Exile, 1831-1841,” American Review of Canadian Studies 17 (1987): 184; Daughter of H. J. Thomas “Incidents of the Canadian Rebellion of 1837–38” Report of the Missisquoi County Historical Society 2 (1907): 44–45; Heather Darch, “The Rebellion Comes to Missisiquoi” Townships Heritage Web Magazine http://townshipsheritage.com/exhibit/rebellion-comes-missisquoi. 66 Gilles Laporte, Patriotes et loyaux : leadership régional et mobilisation politique en 1837 et 1838 (Québec : Septentrion), 354. According to Beaulieu and Hamelin, the paper ended a year earlier, in 1836. Beaulieu and Hamelin, La presse québecoise, 84. 67 William Adams, ed. The Gazetteer of Washington County, Vt., 1783-1889, part 1 (Syracuse: The Syracuse Journal Company, 1889), 67. 103

more rapid recalibration of their political trajectories. Many were forced into exile which precipitated further shifts in content and rhetoric.

Movement of the Patriot Press to the United States

By November 1837, with the increasing loss of control in the hinterland of

Montreal, growing paramilitary organizing, violence, and increasingly strident anti- government rhetoric, British authorities in the Canadas moved to rein in the patriot press.

Although partially due to extra-legal constitutionalist violence, ultimately state suppression removed the patriot press from the Canadas. Such state suppression points to how strident patriot papers were in supporting republicanism and independence.

Constitutionalist rioters, led by the Doric Club, destroyed the office of the

Vindicator during the rioting in Montreal on November 6, 1837. The press, types, and office were thoroughly destroyed, causing six thousand dollars in damages. The printer,

Louis Perrault, and his family escaped before the destruction.68 As well, a group of rioters seriously injured one of its main contributors, Thomas Storrow Brown.69 After the outbreak of insurrection, Hiram Thomas of the Missiskoui Post had his press thrown into the mill pond in Stanbridge East by constitutionalists. As noted earlier, Hart’s Belleville

Plain Speaker was possibly the focus of a riot, forcing his move to Cobourg.70

Constitutionalist mobs had sacked opposition journals before, including a previous paper

68 Gérard Filteau, Histoire des patriotes (Québec: Septentrion, 2003), 305 and Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 48. Galarneau notes this incident as well as actions against other papers, both patriote and non- patriote, including the destruction of the office of the Quotidienne. Claude Galarneau, “La presse périodique au Québec de 1764 à 1859,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada/Mémoires et comptes rendus de la Société royale du Canada 4th series, 22 (1984): 164. 69 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 47. Thomas Storrow Brown, 1837, My Connection with it (Montreal: Raoul Renault, 1898), 22. 70 Beaulieu and Hamelin, 84. Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 66. 104

edited by Mackenzie.71 This time editors moved to the Lower Canadian countryside or the United States out of fear of—or in the face of actual warrants for—their arrest, rather than restarting their papers in the Canadas.

British authorities had moved rapidly to bring an end to the patriot press in the

Canadas. Sir John Colborne, commander of the forces in Lower Canada, had been pressuring Governor Gosford to act against the patriote press.72 On November 16, Lower

Canadian authorities issued warrants for the arrest of a number of prominent patriotes, including press figures such as Duvernay.73 The Minerve only managed to publish one issue after his flight. Charles Hunter and Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette of the

Libéral/Liberal were both arrested in November along with some of the “shareholders and directors” of the paper, bringing it to a final close on November 20.74 In Upper

Canada, the executive council met to discuss “the highly seditious, if not treasonable” content in the Constitution. Upper Canadian reform politician learned of the meeting and actions leading toward the possible arrest of Mackenzie, setting in motion the actual rising in Toronto.75

While there were many reprisals against both reform and radical papers in the wake of the initial Rebellion, a reform press continued in both Canadas. Individuals established at least three new reform newspapers between 1837 and 1838. François

71 Paul Romney, “From the Types Riot to the Rebellion: Elite Ideology, Anti-Legal Sentiment, Political Violence and the Rule of Law in Upper Canada” Ontario History 79 (1987): 134-140. The constitutionalists even targeted non-radical papers after the outbreak of violence. A mob sacked the offices of Barker’s British Whig in Kingston and even killed his dog. John W. Spurr, “Edward John Barker,” DCB and Fetherling, The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper, 24. 72 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 49. 73 Lebel, “Duvernay,” DCB. 74 Yves Tessier, “Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette,” DCB. Ginette Bernatchez, “Charles Hunter.” DCB. The English edition of the newspaper had ended in October. 75 Read, Duncombe Revolt, 82–83. 105

Lemaître, the former printer of the Libéral/Liberal, moved to Montreal in time to oversee the last issue of the Minerve and subsequently began La Quotidienne in late November

1837.76 began a new reform paper, the Examiner, in Toronto in June

1838.77 However, these papers bore two fundamental differences to the papers of the patriot press community now forming in the United States in the same year. First, after the outbreak of violence, the state moved rapidly to stop any paper or rhetoric it deemed seditious. Authorities imprisoned François Lemaître, placing La Quotidienne on hiatus for six months, and stopped Blanchard’s Montreal Express within a few weeks of its first publication.78 Even moderates Napoléon Aubin of the Fantastique and Étienne Parent of the Canadien served time in prison for minor transgressions of what was then acceptable speech.79 Second, in this climate, newly established papers adopted a reformist rhetoric to adapt to the new political reality. As Gilles Gallichan has noted for papers in Lower

Canada, “le ton n’était plus le même, le message non plus.”80 Neither the Quotidienne nor the Examiner retained the qualities of the patriot press in the Canadas. While Lemaître continued to work clandestinely for the goals of the patriot movement, the Quotidienne shied away from such statements in print.81 In Upper Canada, the Examiner advocated for

76 Libéral/Liberal 17 June 1837 p2 c3, Maxime Dagenais, ““Le Conseil Spécial est Mort, Vive Le Conseil Spécial!” The Special Councils of Lower Canada, 1838-1841” (PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2011), 160, 168. Lebel, “Duvernay,” DCB. 77 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 206. 78 Maxime Dagenais, “Le conseil spécial,” 168. Matthew F. Farfan, “Stanstead’s Other Journals” Stanstead Historical Society Journal 13 (1989):31. Farfan cites Aegidus Fauteux, Patriotes de 1837-1838 (Montréal: Éditions des Dix, 1950), 116. There are no extant no issues of the Montreal Express. 79 Aubin spent fifty-three days in jail for reprinting a poem to the patriote exiles transported to Bermuda. Serge Gagnon, “Napoléon Aubin,” DCB. Falardeau, “Étienne Parent,” DCB. 80 Gilles Gallichan, Livre et Politique au Bas Canada: 1791-1849 (Quebec: Septentrion, 1991),176. 81 Lemaître was one of the leaders of the Chasseurs in Montreal. His description of the paper’s goals in the first issue included a long panegyric to the role of the press, but made no mention of advocating for reform or “democratic principles.” In fact, Lemaître stated that he hoped to emulate “les Penny Magazines en Angleterre.” Quotidienne, 30 November 1837 p2 c1-p3 c1. 106

British parliamentary government —not republican independence.82 After the crackdown by the authorities in November 1837, the patriot press did not survive or re-emerge in the

Canadas, but became entirely based in the United States.

Nonetheless, patriots attempted to re-establish papers in the Canadas after the initial phase of the Rebellion to make it physically as well as intellectually, a borderland community. In 1838, Hiram Blanchard, who had already begun the Canadian Patriot in

Derby Line, Vermont moved back to Lower Canada and founded the Montreal Express.

The paper, however, was quickly shut down by authorities.83 Samuel Hart clearly struggled to keep a radical paper in Upper Canada. As noted earlier, after the possible mob attack on his Belleville paper, rather than fleeing, Hart began publishing a new weekly in Cobourg also called the Plain Speaker. After a few months of publication in

Cobourg, the paper moved back to Belleville only to be sacked by a well-documented mob on November 26, 1838. By the standards of pre-November 1837, the 1838 Plain

Speaker was a patriot paper.84 However, the patriot press had moved on both literally and figuratively: acts that the patriot press had done before, such as disrespecting the royal coat of arms, now resulted in Hart having his press destroyed.85 Hart and his family had had enough and by January 1839 were in the United States. By April 1839 he was at the

82 William G. Ormsby, “Francis Hinks,” DCB. To the west, Bela Shaw, one of the initial backers for the St. Thomas Liberal, attempted to establish a new reform paper, Table of Events. Also in this period, John Kent, who was editor of the Liberal from 1834 to 1836, published the Enquirer for a short time after the Liberal ceased publication. However, there is no indication that these new papers were as radical as the Liberal and, with very short runs, little is known about them. See Read, Duncombe Revolt, 118. Read and Stagg,. The Rebellion of 1837, 16nn20-22. 83 Beaulieu and Hamelin, presse Québécoise, 107; Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 66. 84 Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 January 1839 p268 c1. Riddell, “An Old Provincial Newspaper” is a detailed summary of the 28 August 1838 (Vol. 1 no 13) issue. See also Plain Speaker 14 August 1838. See also Detroit Public Library, Burton Historical Collection, Charles J. Burrow Papers, Boulton to J. B. Harrison, 30 July 1839. 85 Belden, Illustrated Atlas of Hastings and Prince Edward, iii. Gardiner confirms this was the reasons but asserts the printing was a mistake. H. F. Gardiner, “When the ‘Plain Speaker’s’ Type was Pied,” 87. 107

helm of the Lewiston Telegraph where he could publish the royal coat of arms on its side with impunity.86 By the summer of 1839, Hart was planning an attack on Cobourg. He traveled back to Upper Canada only to have his plan—a bank robbery and the murder of a number of constitutionalist notables—divulged by an accomplice, resulting in his arrest by local authorities.87 Even though this time Hart had crossed the border to fight with arms for the patriot cause, he still remained committed to the press. A few months before the raid he published a “prophecy” that he would soon recommence the Plain Speaker in

Belleville.88 Here, Hart was expressing both a desire to return to and publish in Upper

Canada and threatening those constitutionalists that had forced his exile.

Patriots were not successful remaining in the Canadas and past scholarship has interpreted the Rebellion as silencing the patriot press. In the case of Lower Canada, received wisdom has reasoned that “the clamour of arms silenced the voices of the

Patriotes, the press in particular.”89 In Upper Canada, the “effect of the rebellion was to put an end to efforts at reform, whether through popular politics or through other channels.”90 There has been ample historical coverage of heart-wrenching stories of personal vendettas, arbitrary arrest, destruction of property, lengthy imprisonment

86 Lewiston Telegraph 31 May 1839 p1 c1. As he had done in Upper Canada, Mackenzie in exile also had the coat of arms upside down. See Mackenzie’s Gazette 6 April 1839 p30 c3. 87 Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 January 1839 p268 c1. Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839. Guillet, “Cobourg Conspiracy.” 88 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p2 c6. 89 Lamonde, Histoire Sociale, 247. I use the translation provided in Yvan Lamonde, The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, Volume 1, 1760-1896 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 208. 90 Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture, 193. McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 206. See also Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, [1963] 2013), 253 for the effect on the press. Wilton notes that the period “was sometimes referred to as a ‘Reign of Terror.’” Wilton, Popular Politics, 190. 108

without trial, assault, and harassment.91 What such histories delineated by national boundaries miss is that the voices of the patriot press were not silenced, but rather reconfigured across the border in the United States. Their presence in the public sphere was in many ways uninterrupted by the Rebellion. Pamphlets, broadsides, memorials, and newspapers appeared in the U.S. in large number in support of the patriots even before the last battles of the first uprising in late 1837. Contemporaries in the Canadas made note of the large number of documents by the patriots still circulating.92

Composition of the Patriot Press Community in the United States

Who comprised the patriot press now that it was in the United States and how did it differ from when it had been based in the Canadas? Patriot newspapers in the U.S., like their Canadian predecessors, shared the characteristics of dedication to republicanism, anti-monarchism, and immediate freedom of the Canadas from British control.

Nonetheless, the move to the United States wrought three changes. First, papers were now more strident and open in their denunciations of monarchy and British rule in the

Canadas. Second, the patriot press was now part of a physical borderland—surviving in exile due to the permanence of the boundary—as well as a discursive one. Third, the patriot press was more politically radical along a range of issues than in its previous incarnation in the Canadas.

91 See for example Wilton, Popular Politics, 190; Greer, The Patriots and the People, Chapter 11; and F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright, eds. Canadian State Trials Vol 2.: Rebellion and Invasion in the Canadas, 1837-1839 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2002). 92 Rochester Republican quoted in St. Catharines Journal 4 January 1838 p3 c2; 4 January 1838 p3 c1-3. 109

Table 2: Location of patriot papers and associated individuals by date of founding Newspaper Location Associated Individuals Minerve Montreal, LC Ludger Duvernay Vindicator Montreal, LC Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan Louis Perrault Thomas Storrow Brown Constitution Toronto, UC William Lyon Mackenzie James Mackenzie Libéral/Liberal Québec, LC Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette Charles Hunter François Lemaître Lewiston Telegraph Lewiston, NY John A. Harrison Samuel Peters Hart Edward Allen Talbot Detroit Morning Post Detroit, MI Benjamin Kingsbury Jr. George Burnham Canadian Patriot Derby Line, VT Hiram Blanchard Buffalonian Buffalo, NY Thomas Low Nichols J. Whipple Dwinell Estafette New York, NY Henry D. Robinson Budget Conneaut, OH Daniel C. Allen _____? Finch Mackenzie’s Gazette New York, NY William Lyon Mackenzie later Rochester, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan NY Henry O’Reilly Freeman’s Advocate Lockport, NY James Mackenzie John A. Harrison Mercury Buffalo, NY Thomas Low Nichols Oswego Bulletin Oswego, NY John Carpenter Patriot Express Syracuse, NY Unknown Bald Eagle Cleveland, OH Samuel Underhill W. M. Thompson Mercury and Buffalonian Buffalo, NY Thomas Low Nichols Patriot’s Friend Painesville, OH Horace Steele Sr. Canadian Jackson, MI Rufus Budd Bement North American Swanton, VT Hiram Thomas Jackson Abraham Vail Cyrille-Hector-Octave Côté Patriote Canadien Burlington, VT Ludger Duvernay Spirit of ’76 Detroit, MI Edward Alexander Theller Volunteer Rochester, NY William Lyon Mackenzie Truth New York, NY Edward Alexander Theller Sublime Patriot Buffalo, NY Thomas Jefferson Sutherland

110

Figure 2: Geographic location of patriot newspapers93

As Table 2 reveals, there were twenty-one verified patriot newspapers in the

United States.94 Most of the papers existed in the borderland and corresponded to areas of patriot activity.95 Historians Albert B. Corey and Oscar Kinchen have gestured towards

93 Base map from “The American South,” Wikimedia Commons. 94 The Frontier Sentinel constitutes the one probable patriot paper that I cannot verify as no known issues remain extant. Early newspaper chroniclers noted that Thomas P. Scovill established the Frontier Sentinel in connection with the “Patriot War.” See Frederick Follett, History of the Press of Western New York (Rochester: Jerome & Brother, 1847), 65; John Homer French, Historical and Statistical Gazetteer of New York State (Syracuse: R. P. Smith 1860), 452. (Both of these works have a different spelling of Scovill; however, there is a high probability that it is the same individual.) In addition to the above-noted connection with the patriot war, Scovill served as an agent for Mackenzie’s Gazette in Lewiston, New York and had written Mackenzie stating that “Mr. Hart is in my debt for the Telegraph Office” possibly suggesting Scovill’s assistance with Hart’s patriot Telegraph. See Thomas Scovill to Mackenzie, Lewiston, 19 March 1839, Mackenzie-Lindsey Papers, quoted in Guillet “Cobourg Conspiracy,” 35n36. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 2 March 1839 p292 c4, 9 March 1839 p299 c4, and 23 March 1839 p315 c4. On 27 July 1839, Mackenzie wrote in his paper: “I hope the persons owing me for this Gazette, thro’ the agency of Mr. T. P. Scovill & Mr. Bristol, charged at a reduced price to Mr. Scovill, by his order, will make payment. I have written him repeatedly for nearly $30 the balance due---I need it now---and I suppose it is withheld in this time of difficulty owing to careless subscribers.” Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 July 1839 p398 c2. 95 Julien Mauduit’s map of the location of agents for three patriot newspapers shows that agents filled a void along the St. Lawrence (i.e. an area where there were no patriot papers). It is interesting to note in this regard that even though a major engagement took place there, the Battle of the Windmill, the patriot ranks were filled with men from elsewhere. As Graves notes, of all those at the Windmill only 20 were from St. Lawrence County (the large county containing Ogdensburg and across from the Windmill). For example, a 111

the links between areas of patriot agitation and settlement by New Englanders and support for social reform.96 These links are true for the distribution of patriot papers as well. As evident in Figure 2, there are two concentrations of patriot papers that overlap with what historians have identified as “radical” districts: the Western Reserve of Ohio and Western New York.97 Settled by New Englanders, the Western Reserve, was the centre of Ohio radicalism, was swept by religious revivals in the 1820s and 30s, and, according to local chronicler A. G. Riddle, was “the home of various isms.”98 It is interesting to note in this regard that the three patriot papers published in Ohio were concentrated along the shore at Cleveland (Bald Eagle), Painesville (Patriot’s

Friend), and Conneaut (Budget), all within the old boundaries of the Western Reserve.

The “Burned-Over District” of Western New York also contained a large contingent of patriot papers. A number of these papers were located along the border with the Canadas:

Buffalo, Lockport, and Lewiston. However, given the presence of patriot papers in

Rochester and Syracuse, one should look beyond the border for reasons for their

substantial number of the recruits for the patriot force at the Windmill were from Salina (near the Patriot Express) rather than Ogdensburg where there is no patriot paper. See Graves, Guns Across the River, 228; Colin Read, “Unrest in the Canadas,” in R. Louis Gentilcore, Historical Atlas of Canada Vol. 2: The Land Transformed, 1800–1891 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), Plate 23; and Julien Mauduit, “‘Vrais républicains’ d'Amérique : les patriotes canadiens en exil aux États-Unis (1837-1842)” (PhD Dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016), 252. 96 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters,14-15; Albert B. Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1941), 28. 97 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 14. Kinchen includes “the eastern counties in Michigan.” However, this area is not as recognized as part of the Western Reserve or the Burned-Over District in the literature on social reform in the region. 98 A. G. Riddle, “Rise of Anti-Slavery Sentiment on the Western Reserve,” Magazine of Western History 6 (1887): 145. Eric Foner documents the extent of settlement of New Englanders in the Western Reserve. Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 108. See also Chaim M. Rosenberg, Yankee Colonies Across America: Cities Upon the Hills (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), Chapter 4. While New Englanders in roots and character, the migrants divorced themselves from the “institutional establishment” and social hierarchies of New England. Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 49. 112

continued survival in these three centres. The name of the district originated in evangelical Charles Finney’s reflection that the district was fully converted—“burned”— in his autobiography.99 While Linda Pritchard has questioned how unique the Burned- over District was in terms of number of evangelical converts, the striking growth of reform and religious movements in the region as a result of evangelism is well documented in the literature.100

The only exceptions—outliers to the concentration of patriot papers in radical areas and along the border—were the three papers in New York City. Mackenzie first established Mackenzie’s Gazette in New York City. However, Lillian Gates notes that

Mackenzie had proposed establishing a newspaper to patriot supporters when he was first in Buffalo. The reception of his idea had been “lukewarm,” he had “lost prestige” in the city, and there were a number of patriot papers already established there.101 Mackenzie therefore established the paper in New York City and moved later to Rochester. Theller followed a similar trajectory, publishing the Truth in New York City in May 1841 but moving to by the following month.102 The Estafette, a French-language patriot newspaper owned and edited by Henry D. Robinson, was already established in

99 Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1950] 2015). 100 Linda K. Pritchard, “The Burned-over District Reconsidered: A Portent of Evolving Religious Pluralism in the United States.” Social Science History 8, no. 3 (1984): 243-265; Paul E. Johnson, Shopkeepers Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). 101 Gates, After the Rebellion, 35-36. 102 Colin Read, “Edward Alexander Theller, the ‘Supreme Vagabond’: ‘Honest, Courageous, and True?'” Ontario History, 84 (1992), 6, 13n38. 113

New York with the city containing a francophone population sufficient to support such a newspaper.103

The patriot press in the United States was both vibrant and ephemeral. Individual papers survived for limited runs. As seen in Table 1, the longest papers survived for about three years and the shortest possibly lasting just one issue.104 The fragility of individual patriot papers, however, was offset by the constant arrival of new papers into the developing community. Only by the last months of 1840 did the number of patriot papers begin to wane: in the period from Mackenzie closing his Gazette on 23 December

1840 until launching his Volunteer on 17 April 1841, only one patriot newspaper, the

North American of Swanton, continued to publish.

As with editors more generally, many editors of patriot papers were often associated with several papers across their lifetime. These individuals were serial editors—moving and creating one newspaper after another. Refugee editors such as

Duvernay, Thomas, Hart, and William Lyon Mackenzie continued their work from the

Canadas. The same was true for American editors who were not refugees. It appears that the first issue of the Bald Eagle was published on November 23, 1838, just one month after the suspension of Underhill’s first paper, the Liberalist. Henry D. Robinson began the Estafette after working with other New York City papers.105 In 1836 Benjamin

103 Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City: 1825-1863 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 156. 104 The three longest-surviving patriot papers were the Buffalonian and its successors, Mackenzie’s Gazette, Lewiston Telegraph. It is possible that the Canadian and the Truth each only lasted one issue. Because of the limited number of surviving issues, determining an average lifespan of these newspapers is difficult and any calculation may be somewhat artificial. 105 Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825-1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 42. Robinson began the Comet in 1832 and then was responsible for the Free Enquirer until 1835. He issued his prospectus for the Estafette in 1837. 114

Kingsbury Jr. was working for the Methodist Zion’s Herald before moving to Detroit.106

Kingsbury founded the Detroit Evening Spectator and Literary Gazette with his brother- in-law George Burnham in October 1836 before turning to the Morning Post.107 After the

Morning Post, Kingsbury edited the Democratic American of Portland, Maine.108 James

Mackenzie had worked with his father, William Lyon Mackenzie, before beginning the

Freeman’s Advocate and the patriot papers of Painesville, Conneaut, and Oswego were begun in tandem by editors of existing papers there.

Others moved between patriot papers in the United States. With declining finances in Detroit, Theller closed his Spirit of ’76. He migrated with his family to New

York City where he began another patriot paper, the Truth.109 Thomas Low Nichols moved from the Buffalonian to begin the Mercury and then purchased the Buffalonian and merged it with the Mercury.110 William Lyon Mackenzie was notable for establishing multiple patriot papers. Editors in the U.S. joined the patriot press as part of the common practice of editors moving from paper to paper. Rather than abandon the cause, some editors would try to continue within the patriot movement after the failure of one paper by founding another.

The founding of patriot newspapers in the United States roughly coincided with major developments in the continuing Canadian Rebellion. The first wave of papers

106 William Lloyd Garrison, The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. II, A House Dividing Against Itself:1836-1840. Louis Ruchames, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971), 43. 107 Detroit Institute of Arts, American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 2, (New York: Hudson Hills, 1997), 34. 108 Edward E. Elwell, Portland and Vicinity, revised ed. (Portland: Loring, Short and Harmon, 1881), 33. 109 Truth 3 May 1841. 110 When discussing Nichol’s move from the Buffalonian to the Mercury, Guy H. Salisbury notes that in the fall “Nichols left the concern [the Buffalonian] and started an opposition print of the like species.” I am unsure what is meant by opposition. It is not clear whether Salisbury is referring to the party affiliation of Nichols (i.e. opposed to Hiram Pratt and the Whigs). Salisbury, “Early History of the Press,” 208. 115

developed between late December 1837 and late January 1838, coinciding with the initial rebellion, the occupation of Navy Island, and the . Next, as a solitary addition, was Mackenzie’s Gazette, which began in May 1838 and whose start may have been delayed due to his imprisonment for debt.111 The second wave of newspapers began from the fall of 1838 and lasted until January 1, 1839, coinciding with the next round of major raids as well as renewed insurrectionary violence in Lower Canada.

The correlation between newspapers and events became more tenuous after this second wave. Three papers, one in April 1839 and two in August 1839, were established and after another hiatus, a last cluster of newly-published patriot papers appeared, consisting of two begun in the spring 1841 and a final patriot paper that was established that winter. There had been a rise in border incidents between March and May 1839.

Most notably, beginning in March constitutionalists began crossing the border to burn the barns of Americans in Vermont. While not mentioning these burnings as a cause, the

North American began in April and carried news of the continued arson attacks in its first issue.112 March through May 1841 saw a rise in the diplomatic controversy surrounding the arrest of Alexander McLeod, an Upper Canadian arrested in November 1840 while in the United States, for alleged involvement in the burning of the Caroline.113

The correlation to events was weakened because three of the individuals involved had been delayed in establishing papers. Both Theller and Sutherland had been captured in 1838 and imprisoned by British authorities while active along the border and Duvernay

111 Gates, After the Rebellion, 35-36. 112 Kenneth R. Stevens, Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in Anglo-American- Canadian Relations, 1837-1842. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1989), 58-59. North American 10 April 1839 p2 c4-5. 113 Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 90. 116

had had difficulty obtaining printing equipment.114 Second, two of the papers in 1841, the

Volunteer and the Truth, were second attempts by patriots, Mackenzie and Theller respectively, to keep a patriot newspaper afloat. The patriot press was an integral aspect of the patriot movement. Its success correlated with the peaks and valleys of the movement more generally.

The patriot press in the United States acted as a tightknit community of editors continually corresponding with one another, forwarding newspapers, and republishing one another’s articles. Besides giving each other quills and exchanging newspaper copies,

Dr. Samuel Underhill of the Bald Eagle and J. Whipple Dwinell, then editor of the

Buffalonian, corresponded, occasionally publishing some of this correspondence in the pages of their newspapers, including a self-deprecating commentary by Dwinell about writing patriot editorials with his new gift.115 The Lewiston Telegraph wrote about Ann, the wife of Theller, and their baby when she passed through Lewiston on her way to seek her husband’s release when he was still in prison in the Canadas.116

A press community in constant flux, patriot newspapers warmly welcomed any new additions and marked when one of their own ceased publication. The Lewiston

Telegraph, in announcing the prospectus of Mackenzie’s Gazette, stated that “his paper will be of great service to the Canadian Patriots” and, in announcing the North American,

114 Lebel, “Duvernay,” DCB; Colin Frederick Read, “Edward Alexander Theller,” DCB, Lillian F. Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB. 115 Buffalonian copied in Bald Eagle 8 January 1839 p4 c1-2. U. S. editors of the period tended to communicate with each other through their papers rather than with letters due to the difference in postal rates. Laura J. Murray, “Exchange Practices Among Nineteenth-Century US Newspaper Editors: Cooperation in Competition,” in Putting Intellectual Property in its Place: Rights Discourse, Creative Labor, and the Everyday ed. Laura J. Murray, S. Tina Piper, and Kirsty Robertson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 91. 116 Lewiston Telegraph 25 April 1838 p2 c1. 117

that it would “become a powerful auxiliary in the cause.”117 In mourning a paper, the

Telegraph cast the demise of the Buffalonian as “like the noble Lion it kicked at his opponent when struggling for his last breath.”118 Mackenzie included a favourable discussion in his Gazette on receiving the prospectuses of the Patriot Canadien and the

Canadian, the latter of which he referred to as “Another Fellow Laborer in the

Vineyard.”119 As evidence of how replete the patriot press was of these updates on fellow papers, James Mackenzie of the Lockport Freeman’s Advocate noted the beginning of the

Canadian and the Patriote Canadien as well as Mackenzie’s move to Rochester in a single issue.120 Conversely, patriot papers shunned others to define the membership of the group. The Lewiston Telegraph rebuffed the editor of the Recorder when the editor offered Hart a compliment.121 Theller, in his Spirit of ’76, advised his readers that the Mt. Clement Patriot was not a patriot paper, but a Democratic one.122 In exile, it was important to define explicitly what was and was not a patriot paper to foster a sense of community in exile.

117 Ibid., 25 April 1838 p2 c2 and 26 April 1839 p3 c2. Mackenzie boasted of the newly published Freeman’s Advocate “ably edited and entirely devoted to the Canadian Cause.” However, Mackenzie did not mention that the ‘able editor’ was his son. Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 p260 c2. The Bald Eagle contained a notice, copied from the Burlington Sentinel, about the prospectus by Jackson Abraham Vail for the North American. Bald Eagle 15 January 1839 p3 c1. Vail had interacted with the patriot press community before the North American even appeared, having placed an advertisement for services as a lawyer in the Canadian Patriot. Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p3 c5. Vail also placed an advertisement in the Patriote Canadien. See Patriote Canadien 23 October 1839 p3 c4. 118 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p3 c1. In an April 1839 issue of his Gazette, Mackenzie copied a report of the public dinner given in honour of Benjamin Kingsbury Jr.’s retirement from the Morning Post and mourned that the Buffalonian had ceased operation. Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p344 c1 and c2. Later Mackenzie provided readers of his Volunteer with a description of Theller’s new paper, the Truth. Mackenzie spoke of it in positive terms and noted that Kingsbury, since he was now in New York City, would be assisting the Truth. Volunteer 15 May 1841. 119 Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 260 c2 (italics in original). 120 Freeman’s Advocate11 January 1839 p6 c2 and p7 c2-3. Thomas Low Nichols also advised readers of his Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian that Mackenzie’s Gazette had moved to Rochester. Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 2 February 1839 p4 c4. 121 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p3 c1. 122 Spirit of ’76 26 March 1840. See also Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 2 February 1839 p4 c2. Nichols informed readers that a paper “about our bigness” had been started in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 118

Many patriot papers openly disclaimed interest in U.S. party politics, instead promising Canadian news and a republican stance. The Canadian proclaimed in bold type that it was “edited by a refugee—published by a Democrat—printed by a Whig, and read by all the world.”123 Underhill described the politics of the Bald Eagle as “intended to support the PATRIOT CAUSE—give the earliest Canada News—go against the

Neutrality Bill—and to EXPOSE TORYISM wherever found. In short it is to be a

REPUBLICAN PAPER.”124 Later, when planning for a daily edition of the Bald Eagle,

Underhill and Thompson stated that “we do not intend to make it a party journal” and described how they looked not to “any exclusive party […] but to every PATRIOT” for support.125 The North American also proscribed any “meddling with party politics of the

United States.”126 Theller in his Spirit of ’76 spoke adamantly against party politics, declaring party discipline “a curse to social intercourse; and a disgraceful barrier to the promotion of the public good.” Theller explained that “we have always been, and ever will continue to be, a genuine democratic republican in the strictest sense.” When attacked by the Detroit Free Press as a Whig, Theller responded that if he was indeed a

Whig, he was “a Whig—of ’76!”127 As will be seen in the next chapter, the patriot press perceived those newspapers that attacked them, not as of a different party, but as opponents of a transnational republicanism.

123 The Canadian 1 January 1838, masthead. 124 Bald Eagle 21 December 1838 p1 c1. 125 Ibid., 11 January 1839 p4 c1-2 and 8 January 1839 p2 c3 and p3 c1. 126 Burlington Sentinel copied in Bald Eagle 15 January 1839 p3 c1. The North American stayed true to its prospectus, going as far as refusing to print most of the proceedings of a meeting of area Democrats because of “having no desire to commit ourselves with any political party in the States.” North American, 19 June 1839 p42 c5. 127 Spirit of ’76 23 December 1839 and 21 August 1839. Theller vacillated in such matters. When pressed on whom he would endorse in the election for Michigan Governor, Theller picked the Whig politician John Biddle. However, in the later presidential election, Theller switched to supporting the Democrats, endorsing the Van Buren/Johnson ticket. Spirit of ’76 26 August 1839 and 8 October 1840. 119

This is not to say that patriot papers or editors were never partisan. For example, the Morning Post was a Democrat paper.128 Mackenzie moved into the Democratic party orbit as well in Rochester, possibly because of his close association and increasing financial reliance on Henry O’Reilly, Rochester postmaster, editor, and Democratic operative.129 However, as a sign of the cross-party nature of the patriot press,

Mackenzie’s move to endorse the Democrats cost him a sizeable number of subscribers.130 In addition, letter-writers to patriot newspapers debated the patriot credentials of American federal officeholders such as President Martin Van Buren and both major political parties.131

Thomas Richards suggests that this aversion to party affiliation was based on two motives: a wish to not alienate Whig members and, more importantly, a product of the desire of American patriots to establish in Upper Canada a republic without the ills of the antebellum United States. Upper Canada would become “the ideal – nonpartisan – republic.”132 While Richards’ assertion regarding an American desire for a new and better republic merits consideration, especially given the comments of Theller, three other factors may also explain the roots of the nonpartisan nature of much of the patriot press.

The first two of these factors speak to the borderland nature of the patriot press in the

128 Detroit Institute of Arts, American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Vol 2, 38. The three patriot editors who simultaneously ran patriot papers as offshoots of local papers also had clear partisan affiliations in the parent papers. In addition, Samuel Underhill, evidently not adverse to involvement with party politics, advertised the printing of election tickets. Bald Eagle 11 January 1839 p4 c3, 15 January 1839 p4 c3. 129 Gates, After the Rebellion, 81. Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 262. 130 Gates, 84; Thomas W. Richards, Jr. “The Texas Moment: Breakaway Republics and Contested Sovereignty in North America, 1836-1846” (PhD Disseration, Temple University, Philadelphia, 2016), 173–174. Mackenzie’s Gazette, 18 August 1838 p115 c3, 25 August 1838 p128 c2. See also Mauduit for a thorough discussion of the debates among “true republicans” over the Whigs and the Democrats as well as the impact of the patriots on the 1840 presidential election. Mauduit, 255-268. 131 Mackenzie’s Gazette 15 September1838 p146 c4, Spirit of ’76 26 August 1839. 132 Richards, “Texas Moment,” 172-175. 120

United States. First, with its origins in the Canadas, the aversion could have been an import from the press in the Canadas, which, while political, disclaimed interest in

“factions” or parties.133 In support of his assertion, Richards points to those patriot editors with a connection to the Canadas, namely Mackenzie and his son James. Second, with their primary focus on promoting republicanism and the freedom of the Canadas from

Britain, patriot papers in the U.S. were not invested directly in American electoral politics. As Richards notes, it could as well reflect a desire to unite refugees and

Americans around a shared republicanism regardless of party. Finally, as the patriot press community coalesced in the U.S., the editors of these papers sought to find their place in the existing American political landscape. They were building a new order in exile and determining how to fit a previously Canadian movement into a U.S. milieu, in addition to allowing Americans to envision a nonpartisan one north of the current border.

While predominantly English, the patriot press community in the United States continued to span the language barrier. Two papers, the Estafette and the Patriote

Canadien, were francophone. The Patriote Canadien contained English translations of salient articles or the original article if it was copied from an Anglophone paper.134

Theller received copies of the Patriote Canadien, informed readers of Duvernay’s patriot credentials, and encouraged “old Michigan” inhabitants who still knew French (a reference to the francophone community in the region from the time of ) and

133 Errington, The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada, 188. McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 107, 136–138; Duncan Koerber “The Role of the Agent in Partisan Communication Networks of Upper Canadian Newspapers” Journal of Canadian Studies 45 no. 3 (2011): 137-165; Duncan Koerber, “Faction and its Alternative: Representing Political Organizing in the Print Public Sphere in Early Canada” Journalism History 40, no. 1 (2014): 51–58. 134 See for example Le Patriote Canadien 4 September 1839 p1 and 14 August 1839 p1 c1-4 for his translation of “The Polish Wife.” The North American copied from the Estafette, suggesting that translation could go the other way as well. North American 10 April 1839 p2 c3-4. 121

young ones who wished to learn French to subscribe to the Patriote Canadien.135

Mackenzie also covered the start of the Patriot Canadien and spoke of the “utility” of the paper for Lower Canada, as well as American francophones and those “desirous of cultivating their familiarity” with French.136 Thomas Jefferson Sutherland included

English, French, and German advertisements for his services as a lawyer in the Sublime

Patriot, pointing to an understanding of French.137 In these ways, the patriot papers promoted cohesiveness to the patriot movement. Nonetheless, the patriot press in the

United States was predominantly an English-language one.

Patriot papers in the U.S. can also be analyzed in respect to the people behind them. Such an analysis reveals how the patriot press evolved and the decisions around how editors chose to construct this community in exile. Of the twenty-one confirmed patriot papers listed in Table 2, biographical information has been found for twenty editors, publishers, or printers. Twenty of these twenty-one papers fall into three categories as graphed in Figure 3: those established by refugees, recently founded

American newspapers whose editors pivoted their paper into one devoted to the patriot movement, and those founded as explicitly patriot papers by American citizens or residents in the aftermath of the Canadian Rebellion.138

135 Spirit of ’76 5 September 1839. Marcel Bénéteau, ed., Le Passage du Détroit. 300 ans de présence francophone/Passages: Three Centuries of Francophone Presence at Le Détroit, Humanities Research Group, Working Papers in the Humanities 11 (Windsor: University of Windsor, 2003). Theller seems to have had some comprehension as he was able to converse in French. This was possibly due to his having spent time in Lower Canada. See E. A. Theller, Canada in 1837-38 showing, by historical facts, the causes of the late attempted revolution, and of its failure the present condition of the people, and their future prospects, together with the personal adventures of the author, and others, Vol. 2, (Philadelphia and New York: Henry F. Anners and H. G. Langley, 1841), 114-117. 136 Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 p260 c2. 137 Sublime Patriot 14 February 1842 p4 c2. 138 Of all the papers, the Patriot Express defies easy categorization as it does not offer any hint as to its editor, printer, or publisher or their origins. 122

Figure 3: Classification of patriot papers in the U.S. based on associated individuals

connection

Those newspapers founded wholly or in part by refugees were the clearest indication of the continuation of the patriot press. However, demonstrating the changing nature of the patriot press once in exile, these papers were in the distinct minority. Seven of the twenty papers with known participants were either established in whole or in part by a refugee or with a refugee editor for at least part of its existence. Editors, printers, and publishers from patriot papers in both Canadas and in both languages worked to establish new papers after the end of their Canadian titles. William Lyon Mackenzie is the best known of this group, which included Ludger Duvernay who published the Minerve before the Patriote Canadien in Burlington, Vermont. Hiram J. Thomas, one of the duo

123

of refugees behind the North American, was the former editor of the Missiskuoi Post and

Canadian Record.139

Other Canadian newspaper editors in exile continued involvement in other ways.

Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, formerly of the Vindicator, contemplated establishing a paper in the U.S. and investigated purchasing an existing paper in Albany and Saratoga, but instead assisted Mackenzie with his Gazette.140 Patriot Cyrille-Hector-Octave Côté, while not a journalist in Lower Canada, was part of a group of patriote intellectuals who had met at Duvernay’s printing shop in Montreal. Côté was a regular contributor to the

North American and, according to historian Stephen Kenny, a “substantial influence” on the paper.141

Other patriot journalists exiled from the Canadas did not, however, become involved with the patriot press in the United States. Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette of the patriot Libéral/Liberal spent only a limited time in exile.142 Donald M’Leod, editor of

139 André Beaulieu and Jean Hamelin actually describe the newspaper as “Tory.” André Beaulieu and Jean Hamelin, La Presse Québecoise des Origines à Nos Jours Vol. 1 1764-1859 (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1973), 98. Hiram Blanchard, who went on to publish the Canadian Patriot, had been a printer in Barnston in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. See Little, Loyalties in Conflict, 66, Laporte, Patriotes et loyaux, 361. Upper Canadian reform editor Samuel Hart became the publisher of the Lewiston Telegraph. Of the extant issues, Hart’s name first appears on the April 26, 1839 issue. The Canadian of Jackson, Michigan was edited by an exile although it is unclear who that person was and if that person had any connection to previous newspaper printing, publishing, or editing in the Canadas. The only two references to The Canadian are a 2013 article (part of a historical series) by a local paper and Richards’ dissertation. Ken Wyatt, “Peek Through Time: Mysterious Jackson-published paper fostered cause of Patriot War.” Jackson Citizen Patriot 7 February 2013. http://www.mlive. com /news/jackson/index.ssf/2013/02/peek_through_time_mysterious_j.html. Richards cites the Canadian as an example of how “American patriots deliberately portrayed their movement as nonpartisan.” Richards, “Texas Moment,” 172. 140 Verney, O’Callaghan, 167-170. O’Callaghan’s contributions to Mackenzie’s Gazette ended sometime around the paper’s move to Rochester. Verney suggests that the end of the relationship was due to the financial difficulties faced by the Gazette as well as the move itself. Verney also suggests that O’Callaghan was being paid for his services. 141 The group also met at Edouard Raymond Fabre’s bookshop. Richard Chabot, “Cyrille-Hector-Octave Côté,” DCB. For the North American, see Stephen Kenny, “Stranger’s Sojourn,” 181. 142 Bouchette helped lead the attack by refugee patriots on Moore’s Corner in Lower Canada on December 6, 1837, where he was wounded and captured. Yves Tessier, “Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette,” DCB. 124

the Grenville Gazette in Prescott, published a history of the Rebellion and his involvement in it but never started a patriot paper in the United States.143 Thomas

Storrow Brown, a leader in the Sons of Liberty and a regular contributor to the Montreal

Vindicator, moved to Florida to edit a newspaper, probably the St. Augustine Herald, which was largely unrelated to the patriot press community despite it being edited by a refugee of the patriot press.144 It should also be noted that it was not only patriot editors, but some reform editors as well who fled to the United States.145 A Canadian’s exile did not qualify one as a patriot editor in the United States.

143 Lillian Francis Gates, “Donald M’Leod,” DCB. Donald M’Leod, A Brief Review of the Settlement in Upper Canada…(Cleveland: F.B. Penniman, 1841). The Grenville Gazette was begun by Stephen Miles in 1832 (Kingston Chronicle 7 January 1832 p2 c3). By 1834 Miles had left the paper and it was in the hands of Donald M’Leod. By 1835 the paper had ceased publication (British Whig 6 January 1835). It is possible that it was then bought by William Benjamin Wells to begin the Vanguard. See Gilchrist, Inventory of Ontario Newspapers for reconcilitation of dates. Gates argues, however, that M’Leod was still working on the Gazette in December 1837 when the press was destroyed by constitutionalists. Gates, “Donald M’Leod,” DCB. 144 Thomas Storrow Brown, 1837: My connection with it, 37. Brown states: “I took no part with the ‘sympathizers’” According to Ouellet’s DCB entry, Brown moved to Key West and edited the Florida Herald there. According to James Owen Knauss, Brown moved to St. Augustine and edited the Herald there beginning in November 1840. The latter is probably correct as no evidence can be found of a Florida Herald based in Key West. However, there is a Herald and later a Herald and Southern Democrat in St. Augustine in the Chronicling America database. See Fernand Ouellet, “Thomas Storrow Brown” DCB and James Owen Knauss, “Territorial Florida Journalism” (Deland: The Florida State Historical Society, 1926), 74-75. There is little evidence of interaction between the St. Augustine Herald and patriot papers. In the North American, there is only one reference to the Herald and that reference makes no comment on Brown. The North American had copied commentary from the New York Sun on an article in the St. Augustine Herald about Florida’s debt. The North American made no mention as to the editor of the Herald or that editor’s status as a refugee. North American 28 August 1839 84 c3. However, two pieces authored by Brown, one written after his exile and one undated, appeared in Mackenzie’s Gazette. Mackenzie’s Gazette, 1 December 1838 239 c1 (an article noting that the British relied on the help of Americans in the Revolution and in 1812), 22 June 1839 377 c3- 378c2 (letter by Brown to Lord Durham, Woodstock, Vermont 26 May 1838). 145 Upper Canadian reform editors John Talbot of the St. Thomas Liberal and William Benjamin Wells of the Vanguard both went into exile in the United States although neither participated seriously in the patriot movement. Due to his reform agitation in the Western District of Upper Canada, authorities issued an arrest warrant for Talbot, who avoided capture by fleeing to Detroit. Talbot “tried to avoid contact with the patriots,” went to Missouri from Detroit in 1838, and remained in the United States for the rest of his life. Talbot eventually began a Democratic paper decades later in Robinson, , named of all things the Constitution. William Benjamin Wells operated the reform paper, the Vanguard, in Prescott. The Vanguard was published between 1834 and 1836. See Gilchrist, Inventory of Ontario Newspapers, 126–127. Wells wrote a tract on political reform in the Canadas, which was published on the press of the Cobourg Reformer in 1835. Wells became increasingly radical after the 1836 Upper Canada Assembly election. Wells went 125

Residents of the United States before 1837 became the majority in this community of patriot newspapermen. Of the twenty U.S. patriot newspapers were the individuals associated with them are known, some sixteen had a U.S. citizen as founder, co-founder, or editor. These papers comprised the two remaining types of patriot newspapers. The first group consisted of papers founded by American citizens to promote the patriot cause. The second consisted of recently established U.S. newspapers whose editors shifted their paper to the patriot press. Americans with these papers were not known to have pre-existing connections to the Canadas. They were all, except two, born in the United States.146 Interestingly these two migrants to the U.S. were the only ones known to have had connections to the Canadas prior to the Rebellion. Patriot papers published by Americans were established on their own or, in three cases, as an auxiliary to a local pre-existing non-patriot paper.

into exile after fighting broke out in Toronto. He would later, for a short period, support armed filibustering. However, after the 1836 election and before the Rebellion, Wells ventured to Britain to press the case for reform and in his published work of the time remained radical reformist rather than patriot. Back in Upper Canada, Wells left for Ogdensburg, New York, soon after learning of the Rebellion in Toronto out of fear that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. He briefly supported the patriot movement and was present with the patriot invasion force that occupied Hickory Island in the St. Lawrence on February 22, 1838 in an abortive attack on Kingston. However, Wells would later argue and produce affidavits that his purpose there had been to dissuade those present from invading Upper Canada. Edward Allen Talbot, one-time editor of moderate reform papers, the London Sun and the Freeman’s Journal, became co-editor in July 1838 of the Lewiston Telegraph. According to historian Daniel Brock, Talbot, who was in dire financial straits at the time, had been offered and accepted the position as a pure act of charity rather than out of political considerations. Nevertheless, the Freeman’s Advocate mourned his death as one “who was compelled to fly to this country to avoid the penalty of his liberal opinion.” The obituary also noted his health had been declining in exile, a veiled allusion to those who, in its view, were the real culprits in his death, namely the constitutionalists. J. J. Talman and Daniel J. Brock, “John Talbot,” DCB; Read, Duncombe Revolt, 116; William Wells, attrib. Letters addressed to the people of the Canadas and British North America on elective institutions (Cobourg: Cobourg Reformer, 1835); Canadiana containing sketches of Upper Canada and the crisis in its political affairs (London: C. and W. Reynell, 1837); J. K. Johnson, “William Benjamin Wells,” DCB; Daniel J. Brock, “Edward Allen Talbot,” DCB; and Freeman’s Advocate 11 January 1839 p7 c3. 146 I can find little information about J. Whipple Dwinell of the Buffalonian. The Patriot Express has no identifying information as to an editor, printer, or publisher. However, it was only on its sixth issue by 24 November 1838 suggesting it was a recent edition, fitting into the first two categories of newly established patriot papers and not the latter category of pre-existing papers changing direction. 126

The surprising similarity in personal background amongst American patriot editors merits exploration. First, it speaks to how the patriot press was coalescing into a community from a number of individuals, both refugee and non-refugee, who were in transition, either moving into exile or a new stage of their lives.147 Second, the strong

New England and New York heritage is striking and points to the role those regions and settlers from them played in movements associated with radical causes.148 Finally,

Buffalo was a common stopover or final destination, given its role as the major entrepôt for settling Ohio, Michigan, and points farther west.149 This migration included individuals involved in filibustering into British North America beyond the better known examples associated with the Canadian Rebellion. Only a year before the Rebellion, one instance of western migration from Buffalo included a filibustering expedition to Red

River to enlist help to create an “independent Indian state” to be proclaimed in Santa

Fe.150 Recent arrival on the “frontier” gave those U.S. patriot editors common cause with their Canadian counterparts to alter the border.

Many were born in New York or New England and had recently moved to where they would establish their patriot paper. For example, Samuel Underhill, the editor of the

147 Many of the editors had recently finished apprenticeships. See Ruth Dunley, “A. D. Smith: Knight- Errant of Radical Democracy” (PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2008), 39-40, 47 A number of dissertations have recently explored the connections of patriots and “Young Americans,” See Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 292–294. For Young Americans and filibustering, see Robert E. May “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror” Journal of American History, 78 (1991): 857-886. 148 These movements included the Anti-Masonic movement, moral reform, and the later free soil movement. Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, [1978] 2004); Richards, “Texas Moment,” 174-175. 149 David A. Gerber, The Making of an American Pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825-1860 (Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1989), Chapter 1; Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress 1817-1862 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), 64; and William Jenkins, Between Raid and Rebellion: The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto 1867–1916 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013). 150 Elizabeth Arthur, “John Dickson” DCB. 127

Bald Eagle, was born into a New York farming family and was living near his family in the where he established the Forestville Commonwealth. He then moved to another utopian experiment in Ohio before ending up in Cleveland in 1836 where he became involved with the patriots.151 John Carpenter of the Oswego Bulletin was born less than fifty kilometers from where Underhill would work to establish the Forestville

Commonwealth and moved to Oswego soon after finishing an apprenticeship at the

Herkimer Herald.152 Both Thomas Jefferson Sutherland and Daniel C. Allen were also born in close proximity to each other in upstate New York.153 Other editors had been born in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.154

151 Carol A. Kolmerten, Women in Utopia: The Ideology of Gender in the American Owenite Communities (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 64-65; Eugene Perry Link, The Social Ideas of American Physicians (1776-1976): Studies of the Humanitarian Tradition in Medicine (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1992), 90-91. 152 Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey, Volume III, Mary Depue Ogden, ed., (Newark, NJ: Memorial History Company, 1917). 153 Sutherland was born in Plymouth, southeast of Syracuse, and had spent time in the Marines before arriving in Buffalo in the mid-1830s. Allen was born nearby in the environs of Cortland, New York and came to Conneaut, Ohio to work on the Gazette in 1837. Lillian F. Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB. The Budget included a notice that it was “published every evening at the Gazette office, Conneaut Ohio” by Finch and Allen. Budget 22 January 1838. See William W. Williams, History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men (Philadelphia: Williams Brothers, 1878), 166. 154 The common roots of these newspapermen in New England and subsequent life paths are noteworthy. Benjamin Kingsbury Jr. was born in Boston, Massachusetts, working on a newspaper there until moving to Detroit in the fall of 1836. Thomas Low Nichols was born in Orford, New Hampshire and moved around the northern U.S. until reaching Buffalo in 1837. (Long after the period of study, Nichols moved to England due to his Confederate sympathies.) See Dr. Thomas Low Nichols, Forty Years of American Life in Two Volumes (London: John Maxwell and Company, 1864). Jackson Abraham Vail, the US citizen of the duo behind the North American of Swanton, Vermont, had not ventured far from home given his family and work connections in Montpelier, Vermont, both before and after the Rebellion period. (In 1837, Vail was in a period of transition, having been both married and called to the bar that year.) Possibly because his father lived in Montpelier, Vail, after his journalistic ventures, represented that town in politics in later years in addition to managing his law practice. The Canadian Patriot notes Vail’s presence in Montpelier. See William Adams, ed. The Gazetteer of Washington County, Vt., 1783-1889 (Syracuse: The Syracuse Journal Company,1889), 67-68. Horace Steele Sr., the possible publisher of the Patriot’s Friend of Painesville, Ohio was originally from Vermont and had come to Ohio via Buffalo. Chronicling America suggests that the Patriot’s Friend was edited by Mason and Scofield. However, Scofield did not become involved in the press in Painesville until decades later. See Albert G. Riddle, History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men (Philadelphia: Williams Brothers, 1878), 29; Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important 128

As for one of the two with a known connection to the Canadas, James Mackenzie edited the Freeman’s Advocate in Lockport, New York. James Mackenzie had assisted his father in printing the Constitution, but by July 1837 he was no longer working with the elder Mackenzie and by the outbreak of the Rebellion had moved to southern Ohio.

When news of the Rebellion reached him, James Mackenzie journeyed to the border and became involved with the patriots, eventually starting the Freeman’s Advocate.155

Edward Alexander Theller, the other patriot editor with Canadian connections, immigrated in 1826 to Montreal from Ireland and studied medicine there under Daniel

Tracey, the first editor of the Vindicator before moving to the United States.156 These individuals left the Canadas but in the U.S. they re-engaged with Canadian politics and with Canadian refugees. Such movement across borders speaks to the fluidity with which contemporaries carried identities as subjects or citizens.157

A sub-group of patriot papers were established by Americans as offshoots of existing non-patriot papers. John Carpenter, the editor of the established Democrat

Oswego Palladium, founded the Oswego Bulletin for patriot news.158 Daniel C. Allen worked on the Gazette in Conneaut and started the patriot Budget as the first daily

Events of the Year 1886 New Series Vol. 11, New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1889), 687; and Detroit Institute of Arts, American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Vol. 2, 34. 155 Correspondent and Advocate 18 May 1836 p4 c3. James was born out of wedlock. William Lyon Mackenzie and Isabel Reid had never married; Mackenzie married Isabel Baxter when James was eight. Jame’s assistance on the Constitution stopped, however, when he and his father had a falling out, possibly over a comment by James about his birth-mother, Isabel Reid. Chris Raible, “Strive On! James, Son of William Lyon Mackenzie,” in Boswell’s Children: The Art of the Biographer, ed. R. B. Fleming (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992), 87–89. 156 Read, “Theller,” DCB; Read, “Supreme Vagabond;” and France Galarneau, Daniel Tracey, DCB. Theller moved to Vermont in 1827 and then migrated around in Lower Canada and Burlington, Vermont before settling in Detroit in 1836. There are others who helped form the patriot movement in the United States who had been born or had resided in the Canadas such as Benjamin Wait. Corey, Crisis of 1830– 1842, 72; Colin Read, “Benjamin Wait,” DCB. 157 Errington, The Lion and the Eagle, 6–8; Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, 6–10. 158 Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey 129

published in the area.159 It is possible that the editors of the Republican in Painesville,

Ohio were also behind the Patriot’s Friend as an additional paper explicitly supporting the patriots.160 That none of the three existing papers shared geography or politics or began their patriot offshoots at a similar time demonstrates that the true link amongst patriot papers was their conviction.161 Perhaps editors were responding to a readymade constituency by shifting a paper that did not have enough of an established readership or

“wheelhouse.”

The third and final category of the patriot press community in the United States consisted of pre-existing papers established just as Rebellion broke out that shifted to supporting the patriot movement. Unlike the first two categories (papers founded for the cause by refugees or U.S. inhabitants), the newspapers that transitioned into patriot papers have not been identified by historians as “patriot papers”. For Kinchen, they do not count because they were not founded for the patriot cause and for Kenny because they were not founded by exiles.162 Yet, the three newspapers in this category, the

Lewiston Telegraph, Morning Post, and Estafette, shared the qualities of being recently- established and the individuals who ran them embraced the patriot movement both in their papers and beyond. Refugee patriots discussed, exchanged, and sent writings to the

Estafette.163 The Estafette spoke against the British rule in the Canadas so forcefully that

159 Williams, The History of Ashtabula County, 166. 160 The contact for the Patriot’s Friend is given as the Republican office. 161 The Conneaut Gazette was Whig while the Oswego Palladium and Painesville Republican were both Democrat papers. 162 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 20–21; Kenny, “Stranger’s Sojourn,” 181. 163 See for example L’Estafette 17 April 1838 p253 c1-3. See also Georges Aubin et Jonathan Lemire, eds. Ludger Duvernay: Lettres d’exil 1837-1842, Édouard-Étienne Rodier to Duvernay, Burlington, 1 April 1838, 38; Eugène-Napoléon Duchesnois to Duvernay, New York, 5 June 1839, 195; Jean-Siméon Neysmith to Duvernay, New York, 24 August 1839, 240; John Ryan to Duvernay New York, 28 August 1839, 247. 130

Upper Canadian constitutionalist editor Thomas Dalton assumed it was established by

Louis-Joseph Papineau himself. In addition, authorities did not permit it to circulate in

Lower Canada.164 John Harrison spoke forcefully for the patriot cause in the Lewiston

Telegraph. He was willing to provide a voice and employment for those who had left the

Canadas, first with exile Edward Allen Talbot and then with refugee Samuel P. Hart.165

Harrison also worked with James Mackenzie to issue the Freeman’s Advocate.166 Hiram

Leavenworth, the editor and proprietor of the constitutionalist St. Catharines Journal, associated the Telegraph with the patriot press, lumping it with Mackenzie as “the false and specious prating of Mackenzie, Telegraph & Co.” and referring to the Telegraph and its “‘Patriot’ friends.”167 Benjamin Kingsbury Jr. of the Detroit Morning Post corresponded with active patriot filibusters and published their proclamations and correspondence.168 Detroiters and Detroit papers took notice of Kingsbury’s deep commitment to the patriots. Elizabeth Campbell of Detroit in a letter to her friend Sophia

Biddle complained that “the most extravagant stories are circulated by those in favor of the Patriots” and singling out the Morning Post as the leading paper spreading patriot

164 Patriot 27 April 1838 p2c5, Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 281n52. 165 Daniel J. Brock, “Edward Allen Talbot,” DCB, Lewiston Telegraph April 26, 1839 p1 c1. 166 Freeman’s Advocate 11 January 1839, masthead. 167 St. Catharines Journal 9 Aug 1838 p3 c1. Mackenzie had actually made business arrangements with Leavenworth to begin his paper in . J. J. Talman, “The Printing Presses of William Lyon Mackenzie, prior to 1837,” Canadian Historical Review 18 (1937): 414. 168 Morning Post. Patriot 16 January 1838 p3 c1-3. Besides being an editor, Kingsbury was also a notary public. As a notary public, Kingsbury notarized pro-patriot statements, including by George Washington Case, a Colonel in the Patriot service, alleging Patriots had been fired on by United States troops while they were on Hog Island which was American soil. For the official record of Kingsbury being a notary public see, Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigan at the annual Session of the Legislature in the year 1838 (Detroit: John S Bragg, 1838), 18. Kingsbury died in Portland, Maine in 1886. An obituary outlining his achievements was included in Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 687; Theller, Canada in 1837-38, 307-308. 131

boosterism.169 Upon his retirement from the Morning Post, Kingsbury was feted with a public dinner with the patriot filibuster Donald M’Leod giving one of the toasts.170

Kingsbury wrote the introduction to the 1847 memoir of the high-ranking Patriot Hunter

Daniel D. Heustis.171 These three papers were recently founded, their editors were actively involved with the patriot cause, and they were all seen as such by friend and foe alike.

New Directions with the Move of the Patriot Press to the United States

How did the patriot press, now in the United States, attempt to form a coherent order through active community-building in exile? There were two key changes brought about by the geographic shift. First, the way in which the patriot press formed a Canadian republican borderland changed. The patriot press remained defined by its formation of a discursive borderland, but in the U.S. it was now also defined by a physical borderland as well. Second, the patriot press in the United States became more invested in a broader radical politics than it had been in the Canadas. Individuals associated with the patriot press community in the United States had ties to early socialist experiments, freethought, concern for racialized peoples, women’s rights, and new ideas about the mind and body.

Both before and after editing their patriot papers, these patriots gave public support to these causes. Yet, in their patriot papers certain of these causes were given pride of place, such as economic egalitarianism, while others, such as freethought or racial justice, were

169 Detroit Daily Advertiser quoted in the Western Herald 12 June 1838 p130 c1. Richards also notes Kingsbury as a patriot. Richards, “Texas Moment,” 170. Elizabeth Campbell to Sophia Biddle, Detroit 5 December 1838, Sophia Biddle Papers. Bentley Historical Library University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 170 Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p344 c2 171 Benjamin Kingsbury Jr., “Introduction: The Canadian Movement” in Daniel D. Heustis, A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and his companions in Canada and Van Dieman’s [sic] land . . . (Boston: Silas .W. Wilder, 1847), 13. 132

ignored or abandoned outright. The choices patriots made about what causes to support in the patriot press also speak to specific conceptions the patriots had of how this order in exile should be crafted.

Prior to exile, the patriot press had existed as a rhetorical borderland—based in the Canadas but promoting U.S. republicanism in an attempt to erase the border between monarchy and republic. In the new reality of exile, the patriot press survived because of the continuation of that physical border. The continued focus on the Canadas meant that contemporaries associated the patriot press in the United States with a borderland separate from the Canadas and the U.S. For one, the patriot press community in the

United States retained a singular focus on immediate freedom for the Canadas from

Britain. Mackenzie stated that the purpose of his Gazette was to enable “the suffering inhabitants of Canada [. . .] to promulgate their political views and principles, tell their country’s wrongs, and explain their conduct” to sympathizers in the U.S.172 Linking the two sides of the border, the aptly named North American promised in its prospectus that it would “advocate solely the cause of Canadian Liberty.”173 It also conflated opponents in the Canadas with those in the United States, again treating the continent as a single unit. It declared in capitalized type that it “will advocate the RIGHTS OF THE CANADIANS

AND CANADIAN INDEPENDENCE ; and denounce Republican apostates and Monarchical cut throats whoever and wherever they be.”174 Opponents on both sides of the border were dismissed as tories.

172 Mackenzie’s Gazette 17 April 1838, Prospectus. 173 Copied in the Bald Eagle 15 January 1839 p3c1. 174 North American 10 April 1839 p4 c4. 133

Those opponents reciprocated, identifying patriot papers as part of an explicitly borderland press, using the term “frontier” to refer to the border. The Bald Eagle promised its readers “Canadian and Frontier news” in its prospectus.175 The St.

Catharines Journal created a new section in 1838 entitled “” dedicated exclusively to news of the borderland around the time of patriot activity on Navy

Island.176

Of course, as evident in Figure 2, most patriot newspapers were physically clustered along the border. They were often distinguished as a “frontier press” from other newspapers in the United States. In a letter to the editor claiming that a lynching in

Philadelphia discredited republican institutions, for instance, the writer singled out the

“low-minded scoundrels of the frontier press” for rebuke.177 Similarly, the Western

Herald of Sandwich, Upper Canada attacked the “mendacious character of the U. S. press, generally, and that of the Frontier press, in particular.”178

Moreover, despite being published in the U.S., the patriot newspapers retained strong links to the Canadas. Regular correspondents sent information south while editors were still able to ship papers north. For its part, the Telegraph noted it would be

“regularly delivered” to subscribers in a number of towns on the Niagara Peninsula as well as in Hamilton, Dundas, Toronto, Whitby, and Cobourg and that Canadian

175 Bald Eagle 11 January 1839 p4 c3. The Cobourg Star in at least one issue included an article on the borderland titled “Frontier pirates;” Cobourg Star 11 July 1838 p2c4. 176 St. Catharines Journal 11 January 1838 p2c1. Previously, news had been divided under titles such as “Upper Canada,” “Parliamentary Intelligence,” “Poetry,” news from Britain, and news from the United States. For another example see Brockville Recorder 29 Nov 1838 p3c3 for “Latest from England” another popular title and a good example of the general practice. See Murray, “Exchange Practices,” 92 for other examples. For a breakdown for what survives from the Herald see Deschamps, La rébellion, 93-94. 177 Patriot 1 June 1838 p3. 178 Western Herald 3 April 1838 p52 c3. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 16 June 1838 p45 c3; Spirit of ’76 26 August 1839. 134

subscribers could pay in “Canada money.”179 Traveling the other way, correspondents in both the Canadas were able to send letters over the border. Even in exile, Mackenzie had a fairly regular correspondent to his Gazette from “the spy in Toronto” as well as letters from Brockville, Queenston, Niagara Falls, and Montreal.180

A borderland categorization also offers a new perspective on refugee papers.

Rather that perceive, for example, Duvernay’s Patriote Canadien as unique, as past interpretations have, the Patriote Canadien was Duvernay’s sixth newspaper, one that just happened to be published in the United States.181 Attesting to the continuity between the patriot press in the Canadas and the United States highlights the community’s borderland nature and how current divisions in the ways in which studies parse the

Rebellion, such as stopping in December 1837 and restarting only in Lower Canada in

November 1838, obscures important continuities and its ongoing borderlands nature.

Despite this continuity, exile to the United States helped the patriot press develop as a community in exile as it became more radical than patriot papers had been in the

Canadas. A general radicalism was a shared element of the patriot press in the United

States, perhaps related to its geography as noted earlier. That certain U.S. editors would

179 The towns of the Niagara peninsula listed were: Queenston, Niagara Falls, “Chippawa,” Niagara, St. Davids, St. Catharines, and Beamsville. Lewiston Telegraph 31 May 1839 p3c2 and 25 April 1838 p2c1 180 Mackenzie’s Gazette July 14 1838 p76 c2 and p78 c2; June 30 1838 p58 c4. Theller had a correspondent in Sandwich, Upper Canada, and the Lewiston Telegraph had one in Toronto. In its first issue, the Canadian Patriot used the Lower Canadian town of Stanstead for the location on its banner but had a notice in the last column on the bottom of page two that correspondence should be sent to Derby Line, Vermont. As well, the North American’s first issue asked “our friends in Canada along the frontier” to forward all information related to “the cause.” Spirit of ’76 22 August 1839; Lewiston Telegraph 25 April 1838 p1 c1; Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p2 c5; North American 10 April 1839 p1 c4. 181 Jean-Marie Lebel, “Ludger Duvernay,” DCB; Galarneau, “press périodique,” 158; Stephen Kenny, “Duvernay’s Exile in ‘Balenton’: the Vermont Interlude of a Canadian Patriot, ” Vermont History 52, no. 2 (1984): 103–122. This was a similar case for Hiram Thomas, Samuel P. Hart, and William Lyon Mackenzie. Mackenzie had written previously for the Montreal Herald and the York Observer and had begun the Colonial Advocate in 1824. Frederick H. Armstrong and Ronald J. Stagg, “William Lyon Mackenzie,” DCB. 135

transition from radical to patriot papers also points to the patriot cause being an integral part of their radicalism rather than an aside.182 Patriot editors, newspaper owners, and printers before and after the Rebellion period were involved in a range of causes such as early socialism, free thought, new scientific fads, and concern for racialized people and women’s rights, yet not all of these causes were evident from reading their patriot papers.

The choices made by radical patriot editors about which of these causes to emphasize and which to ignore in those publications structured the patriot movement in exile. Economic radicalism became more pronounced, freethought and new science fads were ignored or downplayed, and patriots retreated from advocacy for racialized people and women in the patriot press. They sacrificed those causes for the sake of attacking Britain and maintaining a “respectably” gendered public presence for the movement.

There had been stirrings of economic radicalism in the patriot press in the

Canadas. Older work on the radicalism of the patriots focusses on Mackenzie and the influence on him of ideas of financial equality and anti-monopoly sentiments from the radical wing of the Democratic party.183 Recent work in new imperial history focuses on the links between the Chartist movement, Owenism and the patriote and reform cause

182 The patriot activity of these editors is not discussed in biographical work on them for their other causes. See Kolmerten, Women in Utopia, which discusses Underhill’s Owenism, and Post, Popular Freethough which discusses Robinson and Underhill’s freethought beliefs. Neither makes mention of their patriot interests. 183 S.F. Wise and Robert Craig Brown, Canada Views the United States: Nineteenth- Century Political Attitudes (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 32-36. For a contrary view see J.E. Rea, “William Lyon Mackenzie — Jacksonian?” in Canadian History before Confederation: Essays and Interpretations, J.M. Bumsted, ed. (Georgetown, Ontario: Irwin-Dorsey Limited, 1979). Gates, After the Rebellion, 13. The focus on Mackenzie created a debate about the true extent of his economic radicalism, particularly regarding his behaviour around the strike at his printer’s shop. F. H. Armstrong “Reformer as Capitalist: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Printers Strike of 1836,” Ontario History 59 (1967): 187–196. 136

more generally as well as new understandings of connections with the United States.184

The Vindicator copied articles from the London Despatch, a Chartist paper run by

Owenite and free-thinker Henry Hetherington when looking for anti-monarchical and pro-patriot commentary from the United Kingdom.185 A major grievance of reformers was the emergence of a political elite that became known as the ‘.’186

The grievance against the ‘Family Compact’ presaged the extensive protest in the patriot press against monopolies, exclusive privileges, and un-earned wealth controlled by a coterie of professional men.187

184 Michael Michie, York University, “‘Three cheers for the Canadian peasants’: the response of British Radicals and Chartists to the Canadian rebellions of 1837-38,” (unpublished conference paper). Albert Shwauwers,“In Union There is Strength:” W.L. Mackenzie, The Children of Peace and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Julien Mauduit, dir. “Dossier: Patriotisme et économie Durant les Rébellions de 1837–1838,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 25, no. 2 (2017) : 115–228 (A special collection of articles on the patriotes, the Rebellion, and political economy) See also Bryan Palmer, “Popular Radicalism and the Theatrics of Rebellion: The Hybrid Discourse of Dissent in Upper Canada in the 1830s” in Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America, ed. Nancy Christie (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 403-438. 185 See for example Vindicator 9 May 1837 p1 c4; Max Beer, A History of British Socialism, Volume 2 (London: Routledge, [1953] 2002), 6. 186 The term ‘Family Compact’ was fluid and ill-defined from the moment of its creation. It has been given a variety of definitions to the point that in the view of Graeme Patterson the term borders on the mythologic. See Graeme Patterson, “An Enduring Canadian Myth: Responsible Government and the Family Compact,” in Historical essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives, ed. J. K. Johnson and Bruce G. Wilson (Don Mills, ON: Carleton University Press, 1989), 485. Mackenzie first used the term to define a group of Upper Canadian elite who were also entwined by family connections. Chris Raible, Muddy York Mud: Scandal and Scurrility in Upper Canada (Creemore, ON: Curiosity House, 1992), 186-187. Lord Durham viewed the ‘family compact’ more as a political faction, feeling that there was “very little of family connexion among the persons thus united.” Gerald M. Craig ed., Lord Durham’s Report: An Abridgment of Report on the Affairs of British North America by Lord Durham (Toronto: McCelland and Stewart, [1963] 1964), 79. For his part, Head felt the family compact comprised the “‘social fabric’ which characterizes every civilized community in the world.” Robert E. Saunders, “What Was the Family Compact?,” in Historical Essays on Upper Canada, ed. J. K. Johnson (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975), 123. The term – first used in the 1820s in Kingston – had, depending on the user, either the connotation of a family clique or a court party. Patterson, 493-496. Historians have interpreted the term in a variety of ways including a fraternal union or a nascent aristocracy. Patterson, 486. J. C. Dent, “The Family Compact: An Upstart Aristocracy,” in The Family Compact: Aristocracy or Oligarchy?, ed. David W. Earl (Copp Clark Publishing, 1967), 133. 187 Indeed, an 1831 reform petition from Hamilton, Upper Canada contained “anti-lawyer sentiment” and patriots in the United States would heavily critique lawyers and other members of the “aristocracy.” Wilton, Popular Politics, 74. 137

With the move to the United States, the patriot press became even more clearly associated with egalitarian economic ideals of Owenism, Fourierism, and banking reform. The economic radicalism of patriots in the United States—especially the banking reforms advocated by Upper Canadian refugee Charles Duncombe—has been well documented and is currently attracting fresh scholarly attention. Early work on the patriots in the United States gestures to links with and a New

England heritage while more recent studies provide more detailed analysis of the political economy of patriots in exile.188 More broadly, a substantial number of editors had links with radical reformers, and experiments in early socialism through Owenism. Samuel

Underhill of the Bald Eagle was one of the founders and directors of the experimental

Owenite Forestville Commonwealth in Coxsackie, New York in December 1825.189

Underhill was in charge of the Commonwealth’s decision to merge with another Owenite community at Kendal Ohio and he was also a member of that community until it disbanded in the fall of 1828. Underhill came to the patriot community with a history of utopian socialist experiments and, while he had left communal life, he “never deserted his

Owenite ideals.” After his move to Cleveland, Underhill published the Cleveland

Liberalist, a radical paper and vehicle for his Owenite views.190

188 Corey, Crisis of 1830-1842, 5. Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 14, 39–40, 133–135; Gates, After the Rebellion, 55–56, 112–114; Roger Lynn Rosentreter, “To Free Upper Canada: Michigan and the Patriot War, 1837–1839,” (PhD Dissertation, Michigan State University, 1983), Chapter 8;Read, “Supreme Vagabond,” 7–8; Bonthius, Locofocoism with a Gun?”; Dunley, “A. D. Smith,” 51–57, 70; Comegna, “Dupes of Hope Forever,” 98–105; Mauduit, “Vrais républicans;” Albert Schrauwers, “Tilting at Windmills: The Utopian Socialist Roots of the Patriot War, 1838–1839,” Labour/Le Travail 79 (2017): 53– 80. 189 Kolmerten, Women in Utopia, 64 190 Ibid.,144-146. See also William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1990), 151. Post, Popular Freethought, 181. 138

Henry D. Robinson also had a close association with Robert Owen and Frances

Wright. Robinson took over their paper, the Free Enquirer, in December of 1832 and edited it until 1835. The paper was a successor to the New Harmony Gazette. Robinson also dabbled in Fourrierism. He was responsible for an 1838 pamphlet on Fourierism and for printing the constitution of the Fourienne Society of New York. The Estafette he edited, in addition to being a patriot paper, “was the only American periodical in the

1830s that showed any interest in Fourierism.”191

Edward Alexander Theller, like Robinson, involved himself with Fourierism. In

1843, the Fourier association of Rochester chose Theller as its director and Theller spoke about those about to join the communitarian settlement as “pioneers of industrial combination; may their success be such that others may soon follow their glorious example and make the earth what God intended it.”192 Thomas Low Nichols would also later turn to Fourierism. Woman in all Ages and all Nations, his 1849 survey of women’s history, reflected according to historian Carl J. Guarneri, “the Fourierist-tinted view of love and marriage.”193 In 1856, with his wife Mary Gove Nichols, Thomas founded the free love and Fourier Memnonia Institute.194 Refugee William Lyon Mackenzie continued his interest in financial equality and anti-monopoly initiatives, later joining the

191 Bestor, “Albert Brisbane,” 13n26. See also Albert Post, Popular Freethought, 42–44. Two Essays on the Social System of Charles Fourier - Being an Introduction to the Constitution of the Fourienne Society of New York (New York: Estafette, 1838). 192 Read, “Theller,” DCB and Read, “Supreme Vagabond” 193 Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 356; Bertha-Monica Stearns “Memnonia: The Launching of a Utopia” The New England Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Jun., 1942): 281. Historian Bertha-Monica Stearns observed that this community “grew less and less Fourierite, more and more religious,” culminating in a conversion to Catholicism by a number of members including the Nichols’. Stearns, 294. 194 Stearns, “Memnonia,” 294. 139

National Reform Association to engage in co-operative land experiments.195 Mackenzie also had an ongoing association with Frances Wright. In November 1838, during a surge in patriot military activity, Mackenzie held a meeting with paid admission in New York

City. In the course of the meeting, Mackenzie invited Wright to address the gathering.

While Mackenzie was eager to hear Wright, the meeting attendees were not, and as

Wright began to speak she created “uproar and confusion” and the meeting “became very disorderly.”196 After an unsuccessful tour by Mackenzie to drum up support for the patriot cause in New York and Philadelphia, about half the money raised, a hundred dollars, had been donated by one person: Frances Wright.197

The economic egalitarianism and proto-socialist elements of patriot thought were evident in their papers. In addition to patriot news, patriot papers in the United States complained of aristocratic exclusivity and economic privilege and made early distinctions between the toiling “working class” and a caste of professionals and politicians.198 The

North American complained of a new “evil springing up in the land,” the “aristocracy of wealth ; of associated wealth.”199 Mackenzie in his Volunteer complained about Wall

Street bankers and in his Gazette attacked well-to-do “editors, priasts[sic] and lawyers” while Theller also went after lawyers, office holders, and professional politicians.200

Samuel Hart in his 1838 Plain Speaker provided the clearest distillation of this provisional class analysis with the article “Who compose the Producing Classes,” stating:

195 Schrauwers, In Union there is Strength, 203; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, 306-307. 196 See Eugene P. Link, “Vermont Physicians and the Canadian Rebellion of 1837.” Vermont History 37 (1969): 182 for the former description and Corey, Crisis of 1830-1842, 84. For the latter 197 Gates, After the Rebellion, 55-56. 198 For the use of “working class” see Volunteer 3 July 1841 p177 199 North American 16 October 1839 p108 c2. 200 Volunteer 19 June 1841 p151; Mackenzie’s Gazette 8 June 1839 p368 c1; Spirit of ’76 passim. 140

all those labourers who exercise their physical power whether they hold the plough, swing the axe, shove the plane, shoulder the hod, throw the shuttle, trail a net or follow any of the various avocations which supply the comforts and necessities of life and contribute to increase the wealth of the community are Producers and “eat their bread by the sweat of their brow.”

They were contrasted with those “who wallowing in luxury call themselves the

“Professional Class”” who were “lovers of exclusive privileges.”201 A number of scholars have argued that the American involvement in the Rebellion stemmed from a vision among patriot refugees and Americans to create in the Canadas a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian yeoman vision of “agrarian freedom and equality” against an emerging capitalist order.202

Economic radicalism was important to how the patriot press helped order the patriot movement in exile and relate it to streams of radical thought in the United States.

Expressions of religious radicalism in the patriot press in the Canadas had, alternatively, been exceeding limited. Duvernay had run afoul of Lower Canadian

Catholic authorities when he printed Hugues-Félicité-Robert de La Mennais’ Les Paroles d’un Croyant which had been condemned by Pope Gregory XVI and with the Minerve’s role in the debate over establishing a secular school system in Lower Canada.203

According to Lindsey, Mackenzie had read a defence of atheism by the Compte de

Mirabeau.204 However, in the U.S., freethought and new ideas of mind and body were surprisingly common among members of the patriot press community, but unlike radical

201 Plain Speaker 28 August 1838 p1c?-p2c1, quoted in Riddell, “An Old Provincial Newspaper,” 139-140. A hod is a tool primarily for carrying bricks. 202 Bonthius, “Locofocoism with a Gun?,” 39; Richards, “Texas Moment,” 171, 182-183; Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 307–309, 379–380. 203 Lebel, “Duvernay,” DCB; Monière, Duvernay, 60-61. 204 Charles Lindsey, The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie, Volume 2 (Toronto: P. R. Randall, 1862), 310. 141

egalitarian economics, these were left out of the patriot press. These ideas may have been dumped for expediency to try to build a broader community. Radical economics was part of the identity of the patriot community and was one of the attractions to the movement, more so than freethought or racial and gender equality.205

The overlap between those interested in socialist experiments and those interested in freethought, noted by other scholars, was also evident among patriot editors.206 In the winter of 1822, Underhill had acted as an itinerant freethinker “missionary,” traveling through a number of counties on the east side of the Hudson River Valley.207 As a doctor,

Underhill came to Cleveland for a position as a professor of chemistry at Willoughby

University. Terminated from his university post probably for unbelief, Underhill lectured on a variety of subjects, including free thinking, reform, education, and women’s rights.208 In honour of the centennial of the birth of Thomas Paine, Underhill undertook a series of lectures in the Cleveland hinterland that attacked Christian religiosity for persecutions, including of freethinking physicians, and for limiting inquiry.209 In

September of 1836, Underhill moved into the newspaper business with the publication of the Cleveland Liberalist which espoused not only reform, but also freethought. His advertisements in the Cleveland City Directory even included an announcement of his and the Liberalists’ freethought beliefs.210 Underhill was one of the seventy freethinkers

205 Mauduit “Vrais républicaines;” Richards “Texas Moment.” 206 Post, Popular Freethought, 171. 207 Post, Popular Freethought, 141. 208 Kolmerten, Women in Utopia, 144-146. See also William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1990), 151. Post is categorical that Underhill was fired for his unbelief while Kolmerten says it was a possibility. 209 Eugene Perry Link, The Social Ideas of American Physicians, 91-92. 210 William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 151. The paper survived until October 27, 1838. Van Tassel and Grabowski, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, 247. 142

who met in January 1837 to form the Ohio branch of the United States Moral and

Philosophical Society. The convention elected Underhill president and Lucius Verus

Bierce as one of its vice-presidents. Bierce would become one of the main leaders in the patriot movement in Ohio, including with the Hunters, becoming Inspector General of patriot forces.211

Robinson of the Estafette was also a “combative freethinker” who began the freethought Comet in the spring of 1832. Its columns were filled with “extreme anti- clericalism.” In December 1832, Robinson assumed control of the Free Enquirer. Under his direction, the paper increasingly focused on atheism, becoming “probably the first atheistical paper ever published in the United States.”212 This singular focus alienated others in the social reform movement who were skeptics, freethinkers, or deists, causing a slow decline for the Free Enquirer.213 In addition, Robinson was responsible for a long biography of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley that, according to scholar Sidney Ditzion,

“stressed his anti-religious feelings and belief in human perfectibility, and also defended

Shelley’s marital conduct and views on morals in general.”214

Members of the patriot press community were also interested in ideas of health reform and new understandings of the mind and body. In the fall of 1838 Underhill became interested in animal magnetism.215 In December 1843, he was in St. Louis

Missouri to debate the merits of mesmerism with Dr. John Cook Bennett, a former

211 Western Reserve Historical Society, MSS 1081 Lucius Verus Bierce (1801-1876) Papers, 1838-1876 (hereafter LVBP), Container 1, Folder 4 “Correspondence and notes,” Appointment as Commander in Chief of the Patriot Army of Upper Canada, 18 August 1838 and “My Commission as Inspector General Patriot Service,” 25 September 1839; Post, Popular Freethought, 116. 212 Post, Popular Freethought, 43. 213 Ibid., 42-43. Robinson published the last issue of the paper on June 28, 1835. 214 Sidney Ditzion, Marriage, Morals, and Sex in America: A History of Ideas (New York: Bookman, 1935), 94. 215 Post, Popular Freethought, 63. 143

colleague at Willoughby and a one-time leader in the Mormon Church who had written a popular exposé of the organization. Underhill supported Mesmerism in the debate.216

Thomas Low Nichols also developed a deep interest in mesmerism and spiritualism.217

On the medical front, Nichols had an interest in new ideas concerning nutrition, a curiosity for phrenology, and was a proponent, like his wife, of the water cure. His interest in “food reform” became a commitment to vegetarianism.218 In the last years of his life Thomas Jefferson Sutherland migrated through the “river towns” of the American

Midwest, paying his way with phrenological lectures and exams.219 Neither of these causes loom particularly large in the columns of patriot papers, which is surprising given the interest of patriot editors in these two movements. It is possible that this absence was strategic, so as to build a patriot order in exile attractive to adherents otherwise opposed by such positions. Robinson and Underhill knew the problems unbelief posed for newspapers; Underhill’s Liberalist closed and Robinson’s atheism in the Free Enquirer caused its decline and eventual closure.220

216 Andrew F. Smith, The Saintly Scoundrel: The Life and Times of Dr. John Cook Bennett (Champaign: The University of Illinois Press, 1997), 28, 139-140. 217 Bertha-Monica Stearns, “Two Forgotten New England Reformers” New England Quarterly 6, no. 1 (1933), 59-84. 218 Ibid, 69. As evidence of his commitment to these ideas, Nichols’ main complaint about a pirated edition of Esoteric Anthropology was that the temperature of the water for use in labour was changed. Esoteric Anthropology (London: Nichols and Co, nd), vi-vii. Reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1972). 219 Gates, “Sutherland,” DCB. Patriot Abraham D. Smith was also interested in phrenology. Dunley, “A. D. Smith,” 47-48. 220 Post, Popular Freethought, 43-44. Nichols did include, however, the occasional comment on or advertisements for phrenology. See for example Daily Mercury 24 November 1838 p3 c4; Daily Buffalonian 4 June 1839 p1 c1; and Daily Mercury and Buffalonian 26 January 1839 p2 c3. Robinson was called out by the Courrier des États-Unis for his past association with the Free Enquirer. Mauduit notes that in his response in the Estafette, Robinsion did not shy away from his freethinking past. However, Robinson’s main defence was the respectability of the Free Enquirer’s readers and the extent of its exchange with other papers. Robinson did, however, publish an anti-clerical tale that was translated into an English language pamphlet. See Mauduit, 301; L’Estafette 3 July 1838 p1 c3; Stephen J. W. Tabor, The Marriage of Christ – A Chronicle of the Fifteenth Century (Boston: George A. Chapman, 1838). 144

Another striking aspect of the radicalism of many individuals associated with the patriot press in exile is their concern for racialized communities, including Blacks and

First Nations peoples, as well as the commitment of some to women’s rights. However, unlike economic radicalism that had pride of place in papers and the silence accorded free thought and health reform, race and gender progressivism suffered an about-face in the press. While before and after this period and outside of these papers patriots spoke publicly in favour of these causes, in their papers they worked to maintain existing gender norms with respect to female voluntary participation and used negative racial tropes to evoke sympathy from their readers.

A number of patriot editors expressed abolitionist or anti-slavery sentiment.

Before exile, Mackenzie reached out, somewhat unsuccessfully, to Upper Canadian blacks in his Constitution. Presaging later rhetoric in the patriot press, Mackenzie covered a story of a petition by blacks to arm themselves to “coerce” the white inhabitants of

Upper Canada. However, in the next issue he included a signed notice from nine male leaders of the Black community in Upper Canada denying any association with the petition.221 His coverage of the Moseby Affair the next month is another case in point.

Solomon Moseby, an escaped slave, was ordered extradited back to the United States on the charge of horsestealing. However, as the accusation stemmed from Moseby taking one of his masters’ horses to ride to freedom, there was a riot at the jail when he was to be extradited resulting in two deaths.222 In covering the Moseby Affair, Mackenzie stated that he was an “uncompromising abolitionist” and criticized the Lieutenant-Governor of

221 Constitution 2 August 1837 p2 c7. 222 David Murray, “Hands Across the Border: The Abortive Extradition of Solomon Moseby,” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 30, no. 2 (2000): 205. 145

Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, for permitting Solomon Moseby’s extradition, claiming “Sir Francis abhors the black people.”223 Also, Mackenzie had subscribers among the Mississauga.224 Later Mackenzie’s draft constitution for Upper Canada contained not only a clause against slavery, but one aimed at protecting First Nations land rights.225 Robert Nelson was said to have an “affection” for First Nations stemming from an appointment to tend to “the corps of Indian braves” during the War of 1812 and until at least 1826 volunteered as the physicians to the First Nation communities of

Akwesasne, Kahnawà:ke, Kanehsatà:ke, and Odanak.226

In the United States, members of the patriot community continued to support abolitionism. A number of patriots remained explicit abolitionists, including Maria

Waite, William Lyon Mackenzie, James Mackenzie, A. D. Smith, and O’Callaghan.227 In

1843 Theller declared that members of the Rochester Repeal Association should be “the enemies of slavery in every form and in every clime, and the friends of the oppressed of ever creed and color.”228 While Daniel O’Connell and others in the Irish repeal movement had spoken out against slavery, Theller’s position was controversial and unpopular in the American Repeal movement.229 Rufus Bement, a Congregationalist minister and member of the Michigan House of Representatives who had “direct

223 Constitution 27 September 1837 p2c 6-7, p3 c1. 224 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 131. 225 Constitution 15 November 1837 p1c2 see clause 7 and clause 21 of the draft constitution. The full clause was barring slavery except as punishment for a crime and conferring equal right on “People of Colour” who had entered Upper Canada upon taking an oath to the constitution. 226 Richard Chabot, Jacques Monet, and Yves Roby, “Robert Nelson,” DCB. 227 Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman’s Land (Buffalo: A. W. Wilgus, 1843), 313-314; Constitution 27 September 1837 p2c6-7; Gates, After the Rebellion, 83-84; Dunley, “A. D. Smith,” 48; Verney, O’Callaghan, 202–203. 228 Quoted in Read, “Supreme Vagabond,” 8, 13n52. 229 Angela F. Murphy, American Slavery, Irish Freedom: Abolition, Immigrant Citizenship, and the Transatlantic Movement for Irish Repeal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010). 146

superintendence” of the Canadian, ran unsuccessfully for the abolitionist Liberty Party in

1843.230 According to Kinchen, patriot newspapers devoted ample space to abolitionist societies; however, he does not name the papers he is referring to and research for this dissertation has not found this claim to bear out.231

Moreover, interest in abolition was not universal. Benjamin Kingsbury, as editor of Zion’s Herald, resisted abolitionism. In 1835, the paper published a series of anti- slavery articles but only because their author, Orange Scott, had begun a campaign within

American Methodism for abolition and Kingsbury feared a schism and the loss of subscribers to an anti-slavery Methodist publication.232 Abolitionist William Lloyd

Garrison did not see Kingsbury as worthy of taking over an anti-slavery paper.233 Much later Nichols left the U.S. early in the Civil War to spend the rest of his life in self- imposed exile in England and became an apologist for slavery, the Confederacy, and attacked Reconstruction.234

Patriots also expressed concern for the plight of First Nations people; however in many cases their concern was influenced by European understandings of “proper” land use. The Lower Canadian Declaration of Independence issued by Robert Nelson near

Noyan in February 1838 included clauses that First Nations individuals would have the

230 Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 p260 c2; Lawrence Kestenbaum, “Rufus Budd Bemet” in The Political Graveyard: A Database of American History. 20 December 2015, Accessed 12 August 2016, http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/bellacosa-bendl.html#142.19.92; John Leo Moore, Jon P. Preimesberger, David R. Tarr. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2001), 861. 231 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 14. 232 Donald G. Mathews, Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality, 1780-1845 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965),122-123. Donald G. Mathews, “Orange Scott: The Methodist Evangelist and Revolutionary” in Martin Duberman ed. The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 80-81. 233 Louis Ruchames, A House Dividing Against Itself: 1836-1840 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1971), 43. 234 Nichols, Forty Years, 7-8, 335-359, 379, 416-417. 147

same rights as other citizens of a republican Lower Canada.235 In 1851 Sutherland, now in the west, complained to Indian Commissioner Luke Lea that editor, Orson Hyde, of the

Mormon paper The Frontier Guardian was encouraging the mistreatment of the Omaha.

However, the same year Sutherland wrote in an article on Nebraska that “the Indians had no right to keep such fine lands.”236 Patriot Lucius Verus Bierce expressed similar sentiments in later historical lectures, stating of First Nations in 1860 that “The survivors have been driven to the setting sun, Civilization, and improvement have been advanced by their destruction, but humanity weeps the wrongs, and extinction of the Red man of the forest.”237 Beirce, like Sutherland, echoed common Euro-American understandings of land use, where any form of land not seen as cultivated in the traditional European fashion was unused.238 In another historical address, Beirce made such a differentiation explicit when he cast the past First Nations inhabitants as transient nomads.239

In terms of the place of women, Samuel Underhill was a strong advocate for women’s education and lectured and published in the Liberalist on the subject. Underhill also reprinted an essay on the lack of rights and property of married women.240 As already noted, during the Rebellion period, Mackenzie invited Frances Wright to speak at

235 Georges Aubin ed., Robert Nelson: Déclaration D’Indépendance et Autres Écrits (1832-1848) (Montreal: Comeau & Nadeau, 1998), 28. This declaration appeared in the press in both the Canadas and the United States. See Aubin ed., 25; Richards, “Texas Moment,” 180 fn125; and Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 197-200. 236 Judith A Boughter, Betraying the Omaha Nation, 1790-1916 (Norman: University of Oklahoma press, 1998) 52, 56. 237 LVBP, Container 1, Folder 2, “Historical address By Gen L V Bierce, of Arkon, [in different pen] Read at the Pioneer Celebration at Newburgh June 13th 1860.” 238 John C. Weaver, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), Chapter 4. Europeans even avoided land that was seen as infertile because Aboriginal stewardship and management had thinned out its tree cover. Stephen Aron, How the West was Lost: the Transformation of from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press, 1996), 150–151. 239 LVBP, Container 1, Folder 1, “The Mound Builders By Gen. L V Bierce.” 240 Kolmerten, Women in Utopia, 145. 148

a patriot meeting.241 Later, Thomas and Mary Nichols became “notorious sex radicals” advocating free-love and the sexual autonomy of one’s body and published a periodical and a number of books on sex, marriage, and the body. The Nicholses were radical enough as to be avoided by other activists looking to cultivate a more “respectable” image of the women’s rights movement. 242 After Detroit, Benjamin Kingsbury Jr. became a local notable in Portland Maine as a judge, member of the State House of

Representatives, and Mayor of Portland. He announced at the 29 January, 1873 Woman

Suffrage Association in Augusta, his “unequivocal” support for women’s suffrage—46 years before it became law.243

As the next chapters will elaborate, patriot concern for racialized people and for challenging understandings of gender roles was not only absent, but actively undermined by the patriot press. These concerns for racialized peoples and changing gender roles would not be part of the patriot order formed in exile by its press. Such ideals were sacrificed for rhetorical expediency.

Conclusions

This chapter has taken July 1836 as the beginning of the patriot press and emphasized its borderland nature in the Canadas due to its republicanism, including a use

241 See Eugene P. Link, “Vermont Physicians and the Canadian Rebellion of 1837” Vermont History 37 (1969): 182. Albert B. Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations 1830–1842 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 84. 242 Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 243 Women would not achieve the right to vote in Maine until 1919. “Debates over Suffrage” Maine history online. Maine Historical Society. http://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/170/slideshow/202/display? use_mmn=&format=list&prev_object_id=429&prev_object=page&slide_num=1; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, History of Woman’s Suffrage Volume 3 (Rochester: Susan B. Anthony, 1886), 359. 149

of American imagery. With the outbreak of insurrectionary violence in November 1837, state suppression and constitutionalist attacks pushed the patriot press out of the Canadas and to the United States where it expanded and changed, but remained an identifiable community of allied papers. The patriot press in the United States worked to form itself into a community. Papers corresponded with one another, welcomed new papers and mourned those that closed, maintained a common cause, and made choices around what radical elements to emphasize. These elements speak to how the patriot press was working to establish what a patriot order should look like in exile. There were two noted changes to the patriot press in the United States. First, the borderland the patriot press occupied was now much more defined geographically. Papers clustered mostly along the international boundary and the press’s very survival depended on the continued permanence of that border. This was in contrast, rather, to the solely discursive borderland that worked to transcend the border before the Rebellion. Second, the patriot press, in line with the increasing radicalism of patriots in the U.S., became much more radical than the patriot press in the Canadas. While examples of such radicalism from patriot editors span a large timeframe, in the period of the patriot press some of these causes, such as economic radicalism, continued to receive attention in their newspapers while others, such as free thought or anti-slavery, were downplayed or wholeheartedly abandoned. Here the press was making choices about how to order their movement in exile.

A number of conclusions may be drawn from an analysis of the formation, move, and resulting change of the patriot press. First, the continuation of the patriot press in the

United States after November 1837 speaks to the artificial national division between the

150

“Rebellion” and the “Patriot War.” When one looks from the vantage point of the patriot press, the agitation of 1837-1842 appears as a ‘Long Rebellion’ rather than as separate conflicts. Second, the multiple ways in which the patriot press interacted with the border both before and after November 1837 speaks to the importance of a borderlands approach to the understanding of this topic. Third, the extensive geography and the constant arrival of new patriot papers speaks to the existence of a definable patriot press, its importance, and its historical significance to an understanding of the Rebellion. Fourth, the radicalism of the patriot press community shines a different light on historiographies of the

Rebellion and these patriot editors and offers an opportunity to understand how choices around these radical causes helped the patriot press define a community. The scholarship on individuals such as Nichols or Underhill touches on their economic ideas, communitarian past, or freethought. Their interest in freedom for the Canadas from

British control or their membership in the patriot press community is missing and only very recently has Owenite communitarians or freethinking Fourierists been cast as the

“radical element” of the Rebellion.244 However, the focus remains on patriot’s economic radicalism. Taking in the breath of patriot causes and comparing to what was and was not in the press, can provide fruitful insights into their choices.

The radicalism of the patriot press in the United States, noted by other historians, can also point to a transition away from the heritage of the Atlantic Revolutions and towards the economic radicalism evident in the Revolutions of 1848. Miles Taylor has

244 Albert Schrauwers chronicled the Owenite elements to the Rebellion in Upper Canada, however, it is only his very recent article as well as the recent dissertation by Julien Mauduit that have chronicled the freethought and communitarian heritage of actual patriots in exile. Schrauwers, In Union There is Strength, Chapter 1; Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 299–303; Schrauwers, “Tilting at Windmills.” 151

argued for a place for the British Empire in the Revolutions of 1848.245 As well, other movements associated with 1848 span the period of study. The year 1837 saw the rise of the Chartist movement in Britain.246 Michel Ducharme has argued convincingly for the

Atlantic revolutionary heritage of the Rebellion with his study terminating in 1837.

Ducharme hesitates to extend the study to 1848 to avoid the Revolutions of 1848 and risk jeopardizing the Atlantic framework of his study. The radical transition created by the flight across the border could offer a possible solution to this conundrum.247 This radicalism, as prefiguring 1848, also provides another link for the Canadas in Taylor’s argument beyond the Rebellion Losses controversy and the annexation debate which he considers.248

The next two chapters focus more specifically on the content of the patriot press community in the United States. Chapter 4 outlines how, in conflict with constitutionalist papers in the Canadas, the patriot press in the United States created a borderlands public sphere. It investigates further how the more radical ideals held by patriot editors about race and gender were not evident in the patriot press which actively used negative tropes about racialized groups. Chapter 5 investigates the continued commitment of the patriot press to voluntary organizing and the importance of the patriot press to continued

Rebellion agitation in patriot associations and filibustering raids.

245 Miles Taylor, “The 1848 Revolutions and the British Empire” Past and Present 166 (2000): 146-180. Louis- Georges Harvey places the patriote tradition in Lower Canada in the vein of the “Spring of Nations” that begin with the revolutions of 1830. Harvey, Printemps, 10. 246 R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement (London: Merlin Press, [1854] 1976) facimile of 1894 edition. See also Schrauwers, In Union there is Strength.See Albert Schrauwers, In Union there is Strength. 247 Michel Ducharme, “New Perspectives on the Concept of Liberty in Canada,” in Macdonald Roundtable,” Canadian Historical Review, 94 no. 1 (2013): 108; E.A Heaman, “Discussion of Ducharme’s Le concept de liberté,” in “Macdonald Rountable,” Canadian Historical Review, 94 no. 1 (2013): 94. 248 Taylor, “1848 Revolutions,” 163. 152

Chapter 4

“Dear brethren in affliction:” The Language and Arguments of Community-Formation

As Chapter 2 chronicled, after the passage of the Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1834, language and initiative around political organizing in the press evolved towards assisting in and justifying militarized organizing. Chapter 3 analyzed the emergence of a republican “patriot press” beginning in the Canadas in 1836 and followed it into exile in the United States after the outbreak of armed insurrection and state suppression. Both chapters outlined the drive towards constructing order, using voluntary associations and the press, outside of (and often in conflict with) state sanction. This chapter analyses how the patriot press in the United States used language to define the patriot community in exile. Following the discussion in Chapter 3 about the choices made by patriot editors on what aspects of radicalism would feature in their newspapers, this chapter explores how the patriot press defined itself as a community united by suffering at the hands of opponents, that situated itself within an international revolutionary tradition, and that continued to believe in the benefits of voluntary organizing. With each of these aspects of community self-fashioning, we see how the patriot press crafted particular criticisms of monarchy and empire as the violent, despotic, arbitrary, and the unstable rule of an unqualified aristocratic faction. This critique reflected a belief in the values of voluntary associations, a belief that the patriot press felt was inherent in republicanism.

This chapter also outlines the formation of what I term a “transborder rhetorical conflict:” a conflict in print between the patriot press now in the U.S. and the mostly constitutionalist papers in the Canadas. There was a significant intermingling of terms, 153

arguments, and language between papers in the Canadas and the U.S. Descriptors such as

“tory” as well as a gendered critique of Queen Victoria, which had emerged in the

Canadas, now appeared in the patriot press in the U.S. albeit with new meanings. The debate between patriot and constitutionalist papers continued even while the border became starkly defined for the patriot press, its continued survival depending on the border’s existence. This transborder rhetorical conflict thus became the ultimate manifestation of the borderlands public sphere. Shared values, traits, and arguments in favour of republicanism and against monarchy and empire and an ongoing conflict with constitutionalist papers in the Canadas helped to solidify the patriot press community.

Finally, by exploring how the patriot press community situated itself within an international revolutionary tradition, this chapter points to a new analysis in the study of filibustering—non-state invasions by U.S. residents into foreign lands. It permits a view of filibustering from the perspective of those requesting American assistance and an examination of the degree to which patriots situated themselves within an Atlantic or more broadly international revolutionary tradition.1

United in Suffering

One of the boundaries of the movement policed by the patriot press was the unity of patriots in their role as victims of mistreatment. Authors, editors, and meeting

1 Michel Ducharme’s monograph stops with the Rebellion. By examining the patriot press community in the United States, scholars can explore how the Atlantic framework plays out after the Rebellion. However, Ducharme’s dissertation his dissertation continues to the Act of Union in 1841. Nevertheless, he still contends that the Rebellion is the end of the conflict between town conceptions of liberty and the focus after the rebellion, and especially the Durham report changed the debate in the Canadas to one of constitutional practice. Michel Ducharme, “Aux fondements de l’État canadien La liberté au Canada de 1776 à 1841,” (PhD Dissertation, McGill University, 2005). 154

attendees often referred to the “suffering” patriots.2 Besides providing a sense of unity, the use of suffering as a marker of community accomplished other goals. First, it could invoke sympathy—and financial assistance—from patriot supporters. Second, patriots could define how they conceived of their order in exile by categorizing those who persecuted them. Suffering at the hands of “tories,” both in the Canadas and the United

States aided and abetted by their Black and First Nations supporters, placed patriots as opponents of an aristocratic, pro-British, violent, and anti-deliberative order associated with ‘racial’ inferiority.

Importantly, this sense of shared suffering was not limited to past adversities flowing from the violence of the Rebellion, but extended to ongoing challenges experienced by refugees after their exile to the United States. The fact that suffering continued in the U.S. was yet another indicator of the separation between patriots—on the borderland—and the U.S. in general. It also revealed how understandings of the responsibilities of American citizens to help revolutions were not entirely shared by the

American public and government on which the patriots hoped to rely. The patriot press in exile complained of verbal abuse and threats of violence that they or the patriots in general suffered. For example, Samuel Underhill, editor of the patriot Bald Eagle, criticized the Nantucket Inquirer for calling on the American federal government to apprehend and hang all Canadian refugees. At a more local level, Underhill also

2 See for example the Mackenzie’s Gazette, prospectus 17 April 1838; Rochester Historical Society, The Papers of Henry O’Reilly (PHOR), Box 4, Circular of the Monroe County Convention “The Cause of Freedom;” Resolution from a meeting in Cayuga County NY, Bald Eagle Jan 11 1839 p3 c1, resolution from a meeting in Conneaut Ohio, 1 Feb 1838 p3 c2, and a resolution from the Buffalo Ladies Benevolent Society The Bald Eagle 8 Jan 1839 p1, “Sufferings” is even in the title of one of the more well-known patriot memoirs. Daniel D. Heustis, A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and his companions in Canada and Van Dieman’s land . . . (Boston: Silas W. Wilder, 1847). 155

complained of “Ward’s grocery store” in Cleveland for containing individuals “who make it their business to abuse every Patriot who comes within hearing distance of their

Tory slang.”3 Tories were not confined to the empire or British North America. On the proposed title page for his Lives of Remarkable Irishmen, Mackenzie outlined how he had suffered in the Canadas and the United States for the same goals, explaining how

“monarchy proscribed and democracy imprisoned” him “for endeavouring with others in

1837-8 to carry into effect the views of congress in 1775 and 1812, relative to Canadian independence.”4 Here Mackenzie combined the language of suffering with the charge that the United States had forsaken its past commitments. In Mackenzie’s calculus, the patriots were the true republicans while the United States had forgotten its duty and its past.5

Most explicit in this notion of a shared sense of victimhood was the Canadian, a patriot paper edited by a refugee in Jackson, Michigan. In January 1839, the paper included a letter addressed “To our friends & brethren—the refugees from Canada” from

“a refugee.” Beginning “Dear brethren in affliction,” the letter outlined “the dragon[’]s wrath” suffered by Canadians who had sought refuge in the United States. Readers ought to be thankful for assistance from American residents because even in the United States there were “cold misanthropes, who scoff and sneer at the idea of Canadians having any

3 Bald Eagle 21 December 1838 p13 c3. 4 Library and Archives Canada (LAC), MG 24 B 50, O’Callaghan Papers, Volume 1, Mackenzie to O’Callaghan, 16 January 1844. The book was published as The Sons of the Emerald Isle and does not contain a biography of the author on the title page. William L. Mackenzie, The Sons of the Emerald Isle…(New York: Burgess, Stringer and Co., 1844). 5 See Mauduit for more on the concept of patriots as “true republicans.” Julien Mauduit, “Vrais républicains d’Amérique: les patriotes canadiens en exile aux États-Unis (1837-1842),” (PhD Dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016). 156

rights and cast a contemptuous jeer at the unfortunate Refugee.” The letter’s valediction read “Yours affectionately, In Bonds of affliction”6

In his 1847 memoir, patriot Daniel Heustis singled out women as those who expressed the most concern for suffering patriots. For Heustis, “the heart of WOMAN instinctively entwines its sympathies around the oppressed and unfortunate.” A common narrative thus begins to emerge: patriots employing fraternal language of “bretheren” and

“bonds” that bounded them together not only by political beliefs but by the emotive experience of suffering. Moreover, while some “misanthropes” spurned the patriots out of a hatred of humanity, others—particularly women who were thought particularly sensitive—empathized with their suffering. It is interesting to note in this regard that in the 1820s and 1830s in Upper Canada sentiment was becoming increasingly prominent as a form of public expression and argument.7 At the same time, the singling out of women as those more attuned to such emotion was in line with the developing gendered discourse of the period.8 Amy S. Greenberg argues that filibuster William Walker and his confreres acted partially out of a view of themselves as especially manly despite their outward appearance as poor and dishevelled. There are perhaps interesting parallels with the patriots and their emphasis on “suffering.”9 The patriots in exile were in a position of penury and loss and in need of aid not out of personal failings, but rather external political forces working against them.

6 The Canadian 1 January 1838 p2 c3-p3 c1 7 Heustis, Narrative, 35-37. Jeffrey McNairn, “The common sympathies of our nature”: Moral Sentiments, Emotional Economies, and Imprisonment for Debt in Upper Canada” Histoire sociale/Social History 49, no. 98 (2016): 49-71. 8 Morgan, Public Men, Virtuous Women, 186, 227–228. 9 Greenberg, “A Gray-Eyed Man: Character, Appearance, and Filibustering,” Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 4 (2000): 673-699. 157

Notions of shared sufferings helped racialize those who perpetrated this mistreatment. By using common racial tropes to disparage the patriots’ opponents, the patriot press set boundaries around the patriot movement and coded it as white, highlighting the victimization suffered by patriots at the hands of “black guards” and

“Indian Savages.”10 In the context of suffering, such language spoke to patriot umbrage at the added insult of mistreatment by those of perceived inferior status.11 Such language may also have reflected the expedient choices made by patriot newspapermen to build a patriot order that harkened back to the American revolutionary tradition, despite where that tradition placed most First Nations, and to use existing racial tropes of Blacks to attack Britain, monarchy, and empire.

The epithetic nature of “Black Guard” was not lost on contemporary readers: blackguard was a then-current term for a scoundrel or someone who was rude or used foul and abusive language. Mackenzie’s Gazette accused the British of encouraging the formation of “Royal Black Guards” who harassed the Upper Canadian population. It copied the Lewiston Advocate in singling out of “Her Majesty’s Negroes at Chippewa”

10 This is not to say that there were no people of colour interested or participating in the patriot movement. In addition to the one confirmed casualty, Amos Durfee, from the British seizure and burning of the steamship Caroline (which had supplied Mackenzie’s encampment on Navy Island), some sources report that a Black cabin boy was also killed. Walter Hollis, “The Casualties of the Caroline incident,” unpublished paper, Buffalo History Museum. There is also a record of people of colour attending a patriot meeting in Washington where Theller and Mackenzie spoke to raise funds for the cause. From the correspondent of the American quoted in the Brockville Recorder 29 November 1838 p4 c2. Patriots Donald M’Leod and Henry S. Handy wrote in 1839 of First Nations’ interest in the patriot movement. M’Leod reported that there were some 1,500 from communities near Coldwater, Missouri who were ready to serve. For his part, Handy claimed that, with his connections, he could enlist as many indigenous fighters as the patriots could pay and clothe. While both of these claims seem too vague and grandiose to be credible, it does gesture to openness on the part of certain patriots to working with First Nations allies. Charles Lindsey, The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie, Volume 2 (Toronto: P. R. Randall, 1862), 236-237. 11 Jeffrey L. McNairn, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy, 1791-1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 104. 158

for accusations of perpetrating violence.12 In his published memoir, patriot William Gates recounted his experience from the Battle of the Windmill. Crossing in a canoe from the

Windmill to the U.S. to retrieve medical supplies, Gates explains that he was apprehended by a passing British boat on which a Black sailor knocked him out.13 By associating monarchy and “negroes,” the patriot press community in the United States reinforced the conception of monarchy as not based on deliberation, independent manhood (coded as white), and citizenship. It instead cast constitutionalist support as deluded and unthinking: the attendance of Blacks at public meetings was sometimes deliberately noted by the press in this period as a way to discredit the gathering, the presence of Blacks pointing to a “fringe cause.”14

The patriot press also highlighted examples of victimization by “Indian Savages” in such a manner as to evoke images from the American Revolution and War of 1812.15

The patriot treatment of First Nations in the press mirrored both longstanding assumptions about Aboriginal peoples and their current treatment by the wider antebellum U.S. press. First Nations were both “routinely judged by Anglo-American standards” and “explained as dangerously different, prone to irrational behavior and

12 Mackenzie’s Gazette 16 June 1838 p1 c2 and Mackenzie’s Gazette 9 June 1838 p39 c1. This appears to be a rhetorical device and not a real regiment. Theller used the same term and highlighted the racial aspect: “her majesty’s royal BLACK guards” Theller, Canada Vol 2, 19. 13 William Gates, Recollections of Life in Van Dieman’s Land (Lockport: D. S. Crandall, 1850), 33–34. This story was actually first reported by Daniel Heustis. Daniel D. Heustis, Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis … (Boston: Silas W. Wilder, 1847), 50. 14 This journalistic practice was sometimes used against the patriots as well. See the correspondent of the American quoted in the Brockville Recorder 29 November 1838 p4 c2. The Liberal had used this same tactic in the Canadas. See Liberal quoted in the Brockville Recorder 9 November 1837 p2 c5. 15 See for instance the Buffalonian copied in Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 June 1838 p63 c2 and Mackenzie’s Gazette 24 November 1838 p226 c2. 159

violence.”16 Rumours and accusations swirled in patriot circles about killings by indigenous warriors sent by Upper Canadian authorities to suppress the December 1837 rising in the Western District of Upper Canada.17 As a case in point, Mackenzie published a letter from an exile living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The writer outlined his escape from

Upper Canada after being charged with planning a conspiracy. He related how the local militia hired “Indians” to pursue him, had plied them with liquor, and promised them money for his scalp.18

In another example, the editor of the Buffalonian commented on a gathering of local Seneca at Perry’s Coffee House in Buffalo. The editor linked such a gathering to reports that a chief had admitted that they were bribed by the British “to cross to Canada, and help the Queen’s Troops hunt down the Patriots – a large sum having been offered them for every scalp!” Evoking images of past conflicts with the British, the editor intoned: “This is British to the back bone—so were our fathers hunted down by savages, hired by British gold.” He continued that “hiring our Indians to do the brutal and bloody work they [the British] have not the courage to accomplish is perfectly characteristic.”19

Both the editor of the Buffalonian and Mackenzie made direct links between the role of First Nations in the Rebellion and accusations of indigenous violence in the

16 François-Marc Gagnon, Ces Hommes dits Sauvages: L’histoire fascinante d’un préjugé qui remonte aux premiers découvreurs du Canada (Montreal: Éditions Libre Expression, 1984); John M. Coward, The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820–90 (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999), 43,44. 17 These rumours were only finally put to rest by historian Colin Read, a century and a half later in Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada 1837–38: The Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 99–100. Read determines that the report of the three killed (and scalped) rebel casualties is probably false and that there were no casualties from the rising in the Western District. 18 Mackenzie’s Gazette 15 September 1838 p146 c3. 19 PHOR, Box 4, Extras from various papers, Buffalonian extra 25 June 1838. See also the partial copy of the article in Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 June1838 p63 c2. 160

American Revolution. Linking the 1838 Battle of the Windmill and American images of indigenous peoples’ involvement in the Revolution, Mackenzie reprinted a grievance contained in the Declaration of Independence: “He [George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Mackenzie followed this with a report on the battle by the Kingston Chronicle, which stated that “a party of Indian

Warriors” had arrived at the Windmill “anxious” to attack the patriots.20 Through

Mackenzie’s editorial handiwork, the “merciless Indian Savages” of 1776 had become the “merciless Indian Savages” of 1838. The Buffalonian quoted a similar grievance from the Declaration of Independence in its discussion of the rumours of Seneca-British cooperation.21

In a speech given at a dinner in his honour in Rochester, and copied in the

Lewiston Telegraph, patriot editor Edward Alexander Theller highlighted the racialized context of the suffering of patriots. Theller asked rhetorically “Who could hear some of these stories and not be affected? Who could hear the thrilling incidents from a father’s lips, of the violation of a daughter, of the murder of a son, of a house burnt over his head, and himself obliged to leave all, hunted like the beast of the forest by the Indian and

Negro, through the woods, and with streaming eyes imploring us for aid to drive off the despoilers.” Theller answers: “I, sir, could not” for he was aware that it was “the bigoted tory Orangeman, the merciless Indian, and the runaway negro slave who formed at that

20 Mackenzie’s Gazette 24 November 1838 p226 c2. 21 PHOR, Buffalonian, extra, 25 June 1838. 161

time the militia force in Upper Canada.” Here Theller relied extensively on stirring the racist sentiments of his audience. Such a call included the gendered language of the attack on a male householder: his property destroyed, his heir killed, and his daughter assailed sexually. In addition, Theller linked British control of Upper Canada to its active enforcement by ultra-tories, First Nations, and Blacks. Not only concerned with Upper

Canada, Theller extended the critique of empire to Lower Canada in the destruction of St

Denis, St Charles, and St Eustache and to Ireland, “the scenes of ’98 in my own native land.”22

The theme of racialized oppression by monarchy was picked up and challenged by the constitutionalist press in the Canadas, creating an aspect of the transborder rhetorical conflict of the press. Constitutionalists were quick to expose the hypocrisy of patriots declaring the United States a land of liberty in contrast to the “slavery” of the

Canadas upheld, in the patriots’ views, by non-whites. When discussing the rumoured invasion of Sandwich, Upper Canada in the first issue of his constitutionalist paper, the

Western Herald, editor Henry Grant highlighted the “English and Irish, Scotch and

French, and the enfranchised colored people, all united as one man resolved to repel any aggression mediated against them.”23 There was a substantial Black population in

Sandwich, many of whom had escaped slavery in the United States. Using his italic type,

22 Lewiston Telegraph 31 May 1839 p1 c2. Alan Taylor notes that Republicans used Federalist paternal concern for Blacks and First Nations as a way to appeal to white voters. Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York:Penguin Random House 2011), 82–83. See also 370-371. 23 Western Herald 3 January 1838 p3 c3, emphasis in the original; Cobourg Star January 9 1839 has commentary on both U.S. slavery and U.S. violence. This was not always the case. Slaves in Upper Canada escaped to the Old Northwest and New York before the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada and the empire in 1833. The 1793 act prohibiting slavery in Upper Canada did not free anyone already a slave. See Aufa Cooper, “The Fluid Frontier: Blacks and the Region. A Focus on Henry Bibb” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 30, no. 2 (2000): 133-134. 162

Grant was keen to highlight this fact for readers to acknowledge Black person’s participation on the empire’s side and the speciousness of patriot claims that the U.S. was the land of liberty.24 On a number of other occasions, references by constitutionalists to slavery in the U.S. were more pointed. In his St. Catharines Journal, Hiram Leavenworth covered a public demonstration of loyalty by local Blacks celebrating the anniversary of abolition of slavery in the “West Indian Colonies.” Leavenworth described in detail each of the pro-British banners and symbols used in the procession to emphasize the deep loyalty of the participants. Feigning ignorance, Leavenworth then rhetorically wondered what contributed to the loyalty of Blacks in Sandwich and outlined what he saw as the double standard of the United States: professing liberty while at the same time practicing slavery. He concluded by noting that a slave insurrection or an “Indian uprising” could easily dismantle the U.S. government.25

Other constitutionalists combined criticisms of American treatment of Blacks and

First Nations with the perceived prevalence of mob rule in the U.S. Robert Dunlop, a member of the Upper Canadian House of Assembly for Huron and an ardent constitutionalist, reflected such sentiments in a speech to the assembly. His speech, which focused on Americans sympathizing with the patriots, was copied by a number of patriot papers. Dunlop declared that “it is neither the talent, the intelligence, nor the moral worth, which bears sway in the land of Lynch law, negro oppression, and Indian extermination: the majority, that is the tag, rag and bobtail, the scum of the large cities, rule the roost.”

For Dunlop, the U.S. government was completely beholden, not to a rational deliberating

24 Aufa Cooper, “The Fluid Frontier,” 127-148. 25 St. Catharines Journal 2 August 1838 p3 c1. 163

public, but to this “Sovereign Mob”. Dunlop then provided a potent mixed metaphor to describe the results of such mob rule, stating “I call them the swinish multitude, and may the Gadasenian Devil enter into them, and drive them down a steep place and into the sea where they shall perish.” The “swinish multitude” was a controversial term coined by

Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. The “Gadasenian Devil” probably referenced the Gadsden flag – yellow with a curled snake and the motto “Don’t tread on me” – from the American Revolution. Both of these references were in turn tied to passages in the bible, in which a legion of demons entered a herd of pigs and drove them down a steep bank to drown. Dunlop hypothesized that the British could put down such a mob government in the U.S. with help from the Canadas on one side, the French navy on the American seaboard, and emancipated slaves from the south.26 Through his critique of the patriots, Dunlop sought to compare the humanitarianism of the British government with the hypocrisy of the U.S., infusing an element of social class into ideas of voluntary organizing. In Dunlop’s view, it was thus not deliberation by talent, character, or intelligence but rather the arbitrary authority by a mob of a certain composition that imposed a tyranny of the majority on others and was hypocritical and racist.

26 New York Express copied in Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p2 c2-3; also copied in The Budget 1 February 1838 p1-2 c1. The reference to the French stemmed from arguments that the Britain had stopped the French and U.S. from recently fighting. For Dunlop, the implication here was that if Britain stopped using its influence, the French would go to war with the United States. The Biblical story of the possessed pigs is repeated in Mark 5:12-13, Matthew 8:31-32, and Luke 8:32-33. The phrase “swinish multitude” had occasioned a strong response in a number of works by English radicals hence, Dunlop’s statement that he used the comparison “fearlessly.” See Roland Bartel, “Shelley and Burke’s Swinish Multitude” Keats- Shelly Journal 18 (1969): 4-5. Pointing to stratification of social class, Darren Howard has argued that the term “swinish multitude” explicitly contained the assumption “that the disempowered […] deserve their subjection.” Darren Howard. “Necessary Fictions: The ‘Swinish Multitude’ and the Rights of Man” Studies in Romanticism 47, No. 2 (2008), 161. Peter A. Russell, “Robert Graham Dunlop,” DCB. 164

The June 8, 1838, Toronto Patriot provided another example of the way these various themes were worked into a constitutionalist critique underlined by the patriot organizing after the failed Rebellion. The article raised the continuation of slavery in the

U.S. and American persecution of First Nations and depicted the U.S. government as one of mob rule. It also contained gender tropes of assailed British womanhood and comments of the weakness of the American military. The Patriot attacked

the undisguised ruffianism at work in the United States of America, farcically termed freedom, the audacious, bloody, and unblushing piracy carried on by its patriotic citizens— the crusade against the Irish Catholics […] the banishment of the Indians, – the continued slavery of the Blacks, – the defeat of the military in New Orleans by the mob, – the repeated assaults on British Officers and the indignities offered to British females, – these incessantly recurring outrages, coupled with the invasions of British territory, the slaughter of British soldiers, the permitted sacking of all the arsenals and magazines, the insults offered to British subjects, and finally the attack on the commercial relations between the countries by the wanton destruction of the Sir Robert Peel Steamer, affords as fine a practical comment on republican blessings, as the most ardent friend of the Monarch could desire.27

Such a commentary came in the aftermath of the patriot burning of the steamer Sir Robert

Peel, hence the charge of attacking commerce. During one of its regular trips up the St.

Lawrence, a group of patriots commandeered the steamer when it stopped to pick up wood on Wells Island. After evicting the passengers and ransacking the Peel, the patriots burned the ship. In its critique, the Patriot combined this incident with others to outline

27 Toronto Patriot 8 June 1838 p2 c1. The “defeat of soldiers” is possibly a reference to a news story then circulating of a group of dragoons who failed to disperse a crowd that had gathered to watch a fight between two slaves. (Vermont Phoenix 4 May 1838 p3 c1) The reference to assaults could stem from abuse directed at three British officers when they had recently crossed into the United States. The officers, who were dressed in plain clothes, were pushed and pelted with eggs in Detroit. (Western Herald 22 May 1838 p109 c 1-2.) Grant also used this incident to attack the character of “the ‘Sovereign People’.” 165

what it viewed as a pattern of egregious behaviour—including slavery and the policy of

Indian Removal— indicative of republicanism, concluding with a comparison to monarchy.

In answer to such charges, patriots responded two ways. The first was to lash out with insults and violence. As a case in point, in response to a critique from Grant’s

Western Herald about persecution of First Nations people and chattel slavery in the

United States, Samuel Underhill in his Bald Eagle resorted to name-calling. For raising such issues, Grant was called a “baby” and a “baboon.”28 The second was to highlight

British hypocrisy around abolition, the “white slavery” of the English working class, and asserting that Britain was only interested in abolition to damage the United States.

Finally, patriots pointed to acts of violence within the British Empire. In response to the constitutionalist papers’ focus on the existence of chattel slavery in the patriots’ supposed land of liberty, the patriots countered with claims to natural rights as well as criticisms of empire and class.

Patriot newspapers published accounts of patriot attacks on racialized opponents; these opponents who, we have seen, were cast by the patriot press as the cause of much of the patriot community’s suffering. In his Spirit of ’76, Theller recounted that a member of one of the Upper Canadian Black Volunteer militias—or, as Theller described him for his readers, “one of Her Majesty’s Ex Black Guards”—came to Detroit in search of a cobbler to “get trusted for a pair of shoes.” The militia soldier was refused service.

Theller does not specify if the soldier’s treatment was a consequence of his political

28 Bald Eagle December 28 1838 p3 c2. Underhill’s excerpt included Grant’s declaration that British invasion of the United Sates would “let loose from the galling fetters of SLAVERY, her millions of toiling bondsmen [and]; restore to the injured robbed and oppressed red men of the forest, the homes of their fathers, the soil of their nativity.” 166

beliefs, his ‘race,’ or both. Following the denial of service, the soldier “undertook to abuse the vender. But Mr. Negro barked up the wrong tree – he found he was not in

Malden, and that the folks here knew the vulnerable parts of his race.” For crossing to

Detroit in search of consumer goods, despite being a ‘tory,’ the black militia member

“got it on the shins, and retreated roaring.”29 Theller had commanded the schooner Ann during the patriot capture of the Upper Canadian Bois Blanc Island in the Detroit River.30

Theller was captured by the 2nd Essex Company of Coloured Volunteers, a black militia unit, when the Ann ran aground near Malden, Upper Canada. On one level, it is possible that in reporting the incident Theller sought vengeance for the humiliation—both political and racial—of his own capture. On another level, Theller was crafting how the patriot movement in exile might be ordered, namely as exclusively white, as well as republican.

In another issue, Theller wrote that the British were actively trying to court the

First Nations around Lake Superior in the event of a war. Theller thought the state of

Michigan should, in such a case, procure its own arms: “we will not trouble the United

States for help, we will help ourselves, and rendering a good account of all their red skins and red coats too.”31 The Buffalonian, when reporting on the Seneca congregating at

Perry’s Coffee House, added that “the American population is perfectly quiet and unexcited, but they remember too well the horrors of Indian warfare to remain so when

29 Sprit of ‘76 29 August 1839. Malden, Upper Canada lay across the river from Detroit. 30 In many cases the schooner is spelled as the Anne. However, Theller in his memoir and contemporary newspaper reports names the ship as the “Ann” of Detroit. Theller, Canada, Volume 1, 116, 119, 124. Walter Lewis with Dick Palmer, Dave Swayze, Peter Warwick, Ken Macpherson, Bill McNeil, Rick Neilson, Gerry Ouderkirk and Ron Beaupre, “Ann of Detroit (Schooner),” Maritime History of the Great Lakes, Accessed 12 January 2017, http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/57787/data. It appears that the addition of the ‘e’ is traceable to Lindsey and later Guillet. Lindsey, Life and Times, Volume 2, 170. Guillet, Life and Times, 88-93. 31 Spirit of ‘76 17 March 1840. 167

such means are resorted to,” implying that racialized violence would stir American citizens to mount an active defence of transborder republicanism.32

Patriots also threw back charges of hypocrisy. For example, Maria Wait, on her journey to Britain to seek redress for her exiled patriot brother Benjamin Wait, wrote publicly of attending various anti-slavery meetings. Wait critiqued the aristocratic pomp of the African Colonization Society and noted to her imprisoned brother “that the twenty millions paid to West India slave owners, are wrung, by taxes, from the scanty earnings of those in this country who are little less slaves than the blacks.”33 Wait was alluding to the compensation offered to planters as part of the recent abolition of slavery across the

British Empire.

In a similar vein, a letter-writer to Mackenzie’s Gazette complained that when

“The [US] government wish[es] to abolish the slavery of the nation to foreign [i.e.

British] masters—the friends of despotism step in and cry ‘first put an end to negro slavery’ — ‘don’t touch the banks’ — ‘put down the secret societies’.”34 In the view of the letter-writer, constitutionalist critiques were intend to distract Americans from their efforts against banking elites and foreign capital.

For his part, Mackenzie used the Enterprise case to attack British designs on the

United States. The Enterprise had been involved in the coastal slave trade before being driven by bad weather to Bermuda. There, British authorities freed the slaves on board as they were now on British soil. Mackenzie wrote a long open letter to William Wallace, an associate now based in Richmond, Virginia, which Mackenzie published on the front

32 PHOR, Buffalonian, extra, 25 June 1838. 33 Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman’s Land (Buffalo: A. W. Wilgus, 1843), 315. 34 Mackenzie’s Gazette 25 August 1838 p123. 168

page of the Gazette. Mackenzie complained of “those presses which, like the New York

Emancipator, continually harp upon the hardships attending the condition of the agricultural bondsmen of the south, yet have not one sympathizing tear to shed over the horrible crimes committed by the English authorities in their efforts to subjugate soul and body of the white slaves of Canada.”35 The language of slavery was used here to mean subjects of monarchy in the Canadas. In a subsequent response to some negative reactions by readers to his initial letter, Mackenzie asked “Who paid the West India slave owners for their negroes? The aristocracy of England! How did they raise the money? By screwing the last dollar out of their domestic cream coloured serfs, the most miserable wretches in all God’s creation.” The British working class and Canadians were both oppressed by British capital and empire. Mackenzie then compared the experience of a pregnant English factory worker with that of a pregnant West Indian slave, concluding that the situations of “The working men of Lancashire were worse than the slaves of the

West Indies.”36 In sum, to the charges of hypocrisy, the patriot press developed a class critique of the industrialization of Britain to stave off questions about U.S. chattel slavery and expanded it to the political subjugation of the Canadas.

Mackenzie’s initial coverage of the Enterprise case also charged that such actions by the British were a violation of American sovereignty and indicative of British attempts to foment desertion or mutiny amongst slaves in the United States rather than oppose slavery out of a concern for natural rights. For Mackenzie, British emancipation was a

35 Matthew Karp, This Vast Sothern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 17. Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p1 c1. The use of the term “white slaves” by Mackenzie in exile was not a one-time occurrence, see also Mackenzie’s Gazette 7 November 1840 p30 c2, 3. 36 Mackenzie’s Gazette 11 May 1839 p350 c2-3. 169

political ploy rather than a magnanimous gesture: “we all know that England makes a pretense of freeing the slaves for no other purpose than to weaken and harrass [sic] these free states.”37 Pointing to past practice as evidence of insincerity, Mackenzie stated that

“England […] has been for centuries the greatest slave-holding state in the world.”38 In his follow-up letter, Mackenzie blamed the presence of slavery in America on the British asking “who imposed and forced negro slavery on the Southern States? The aristocracy of England.”39

The Lewiston Telegraph raised the case of a specific individual to show the hypocrisy of British concern for Black rights in the United States. The paper carried a story of an unnamed “black man” who had had an audience with Lieutenant-Governor of

Upper Canada, Sir George Arthur, with the goal of bringing “400 colored families into

Canada, from Ohio and Kentucky” in exchange for seats for himself and others on the

Legislative Council of Upper Canada. Here were individuals leaving republicanism for monarchy. In reponse, the Telegraph stated that the Black man in question would be “too decent” for the Legislative Council. The paper advised him “to call upon Judge

Robinson’s colored son here in Buffalo, and learn the conduct of the tories towards the blacks.” The Telegraph thus described the magnanimity of the British authorities as insincere based on the treatment by Upper Canada Chief Justice, Sir John Beverley

Robinson of his supposedly Black son.40

37 Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p1 c1–4, Gates, After the Rebellion, 82. 38 Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p1 c1. 39 Mackenzie’s Gazette 11 May 1839 p350 c 2. 40 Lewiston Telegraph 31 May 1839 p2 c6. The Telegraph was still somewhat negative describing the others of the migrants who would sit on the council as “his [the Black community leader’s] loafers.” No previous biographies of Sir have ever mentioned the existence of an illegitimate Black American child. Such an assertion by the Buffalonian is most likely false, but does harken back to 170

Figure 4: Henry R. Robinson “British Warfare in 1812, 1837–38.”

In Figure 4, a hand-coloured lithograph entitled “British Warfare in 1812, 1837-

38” by Henry R. Robinson portrayed the true motives of British Indigenous allies and of

British abolition efforts.41 In the centre, a figure dressed like John Bull holds up a sign

“Liberty to the Negros,” attracting the attention of a slave who cries out “Gorra - mighty! me burn all de farming utensil!” In the front is a pile of said farming utensils ablaze. Here lay the accusation that the British were undertaking abolition, not out of a concern for natural rights but rather to subvert the American republic and that Blacks would not work outside slavery. To the right, a British officer caressing a slave holds a torch to an ornate

Mackenzie’s critique of the Robinson family pre-American Revolution. Patrick Brode, Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact (Toronto: Osgoode Society, 1984). Robert E. Saunders, “Sir John Beverly Robinson,” DCB. 41 Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1970-188-2011 W.H. Coverdale Collection of Canadiana, Henry R. Robinson, British Warfare in 1812, 1837-38, New York, ca. 1843, hand-coloured lithograph, 34.7 x 49.8 cm. Henry R. Robinson was a noted New York lithographer and prominent political caricaturist. According to Peter Welsh he was a Whig who mercilessly attacked elements of the Democratic party, including the Locofocos, and was “consistently an Anglophile.” Although in the latter instance this is clearly not the case given the subject matter of this particular lithograph. Peter C. Welsh, “Henry R. Robinson: Printmaker to the Whig Party,” New York History 53, no. 1 (1972): 29, 41, 52. 171

building—possibly the White House given the reference in the title to 1812.Under his feet and presumably set to be trampled upon are two papers, one inscribed with “Rights of Nations,” the other with “Rights of War between Civilized Nations.” In addition, the lithograph perhaps also paints the British as promoters of miscegenation with the depiction of the British officer caressing the slave. Robinson’s message in regards to slavery and Blacks was two-fold. First, the British violated rights of nations and proper warfare with scalps, inciting slave insurrection, and burning valued property as they had with the Caroline and the White House. Second, the British used racialized others to do their work—racialized others who were not deliberative citizens, given their uneducated speech patterns and their susceptibility to the bribes of rum and politically expedient emancipation.

Maria Wait merits further attention in this context. Attending anti-slavery meetings when visiting Britain, Wait also called out British hypocrisy. At the World

Anti-Slavery Convention, which became infamous for its limitations on participation of female delegates, Wait used the controversy to criticize Britain. She explained how

British abolitionist George Thompson had pleaded for female participation at the convention and how, according to Thompson, it was the “Spartan” women who had stood between him and his own death at the hands of a mob during his 1834 speaking tour of the United States. Wait poignantly commented that since female voluntary participation was “contrary to the custom and usage of this nation [the United Kingdom,] the fearless daughters of America, who were so deservedly compared to brave Lacedaemonian women, were doomed to silence.” Wait here developed a unique response to constitutionalists’ critiques of slavery in the United States, one based on her gendered

172

exclusion by the British from the World Anti-Slavery Convention. While many women in the U.S. strived to end slavery, British gendered exclusion kept those same women from partaking in their rightful roles as delegates and hindered the progress of abolition.42 Wait noted the hypocrisy of limits to female participation imposed “by Englishmen, who sung hozannas to their sovereign Queen.”43 As will be seen in the following chapter, the place of women in patriot voluntary organizing in exile became a clear demarcation point between how patriot papers hoped to order the movement and the norms in the Canadas around female voluntary participation. As a result of defending a nation with chattel slavery as the bastion of liberty, Wait developed a claim to the natural rights of voluntary participation by certain classes of women which she accused the British of limiting.

The final strategy used by the patriot press to deflect constitutionalist criticisms of slavery in America involved casting the British as cruel oppressors in their own right.

Returning to Robinson’s lithograph, it portrayed the British as working with both Blacks and First Nations against the patriots in line with British actions in the War of 1812. On the left, with the burning Caroline in the background, a figure addressed as Upper

Canadian Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, dressed in British military garb and holding a scalp, exclaimed “No Quarter, no prisoners! Hurrah! for Queen Victoria!” as he egged on a caricatured First Nations’ warrior. The warrior, wielding a tomahawk, shouted “Give me plenty rum, Gubner Head, I catch you more Scalps - !” Mirroring accusations against the British by the Buffalonian for inciting the Seneca to attack the patriots, Bond Head was farming out the committal of atrocities to a First Nations

42 Wait, Letters, 313-314. 43 Ibid., 313. 173

warrior, in this case with promises of rum rather than money. What patriots were experienced with the burning of the Caroline was equated to the suffering caused by the

British burnings of the War of 1812.

Likewise, Mackenzie attacked the cruelty of poor houses, cotton factories, impressment, and the British army’s practice of lashing its soldiers and charged that

Britain “tramples under foot every vestige of freedom in Canada, and wades through the blood of crouching millions in India.”44 Mackenzie’s depictions of cruelty ended with an attack on empire as cruelty’s embodiment. One of the first stories in the Patriote

Canadien was of an unsuccessful petition for clemency in India making sure the similarities of the supplicating wife in India and the wife of Samuel Lount were highlighted.45 In one of the farthest flung instances of a critique of empire, Mackenzie greeted with joy news of the destruction of the British force that had retreated from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In a large title announcing the news, Mackenzie proclaimed “British Burnings, Butcherings, and Robberies in Ireland, Canada, China, and

India, terribly avenged at Cabool [sic], Wellington’s Moscow!!!”46 While Britain criticized American slavery, patriots contended that Britain was also engaged in cruelty and pointed to actions in the empire as a whole, not just in the Canadas, to justify their argument.

44 Mackenzie’s Gazette 27 April 1839 p1 c1. In his follow-up to his open letter, Mackenzie complained of “the base hypocrisy in the agents of the English Manufacturers in New York who continually cry out against the Slavery of men with black faces, in their Emancipator, but have not one word to say in condemnation of the far more cruel bondage in which Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Canadians, and Bengalese are involved.” Mackenzie’s Gazette 11 May 1839 p350 c2. 45 Patriote Canadien 7 August 1839 p1 c1-2. 46 Volunteer 25 April 1842 p1c1-3. The Duke of Wellington was Leader in the House of Lords and Commander-in-Chief of British forces around this time. 174

The depiction in patriot and constitutionalist rhetoric of Blacks and First Nations as some of the strongest forces in opposition to patriots and American republicanism had some basis in fact. Historian Mary Beacock Fryer notes how “Blacks were among the most reliable troops for service on the frontiers because they viewed Americans as implacable enemies for tolerating slavery.”47 Josiah Henson, an escaped slave and local notable in the Upper Canadian Black community, recounted his experience helping to lead the 2nd Essex Coloured Volunteers during the Rebellion. In his version of the capture of the Ann, Henson explained the motives for members of the Black community: “the coloured men were willing to help defend the government that had given them a home when they had fled from slavery.”48 In an earlier edition of his autobiography, Henson noted the joy occasioned by crossing the Detroit River boundary, explaining that on his escape “my first impulse was to throw myself on the ground, and giving way to the riotous exultation of my feelings, to execute sundry antics which excited the astonishment of those who were looking on.”49 A number of historians have chronicled

Black participation in the Rebellion on the side of the colonial administration.50 The

‘racial’ divide between supporters and opponents of British rule in the Canadas was a

47 Mary Beacock Fryer, Volunteers and Recoats, Rebels and Raiders (Toronto: Dundurn Press for the Canadian War Museum and Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1987), 67. 48 Henson, Josiah, Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson ed. John Lobb. London: Office of the Christian Age, 1878, 176. Henson’s recounting of his Rebellion service is not in earlier autobiographies. What can possibly explain such an omission is that both of those were published in the United States while the last was published in the United Kingdom. Perhaps Henson or the editors of the American editions withheld such pro-British sentiments and service. See Josiah Henson, Life of Josiah Henson (Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849); Josiah Henson, Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1858). 49 Henson, Life, 58-59. 50 Melody Brown “Blacks in the Rebellion of 1837,” in 1837 Rebellion Remembered: Papers Presented at the 1837 Rebellion Remembered Conference of the Ontario Historical Society, Black Creek Pioneer Village, September 28-October 3, 1987 (Willowdale: Ontario Historical Society, 1988),113-116 ; Fred Landon “Canadian Negroes and the Rebellion of 1837” Journal of Negro History 7 no. 4 (1922): 377-379. 175

transnational one. Recently Gerald Horne has noted the long history of perceived and actual support for Britain among African-Americans in the United States. David Shields, in his study of the American abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, also noted that it was strongly against the Rebellion out of support for the continued presence of a British—and abolitionist—political entity in North America.51

However, can such violent attacks, both literal and figurative, in the patriot press against Blacks and First Nations be ascribed only to the fact that those groups took actions—real or imagined—against the patriots? Thomas Richards posits that such language also reflected American desire for a new republican Upper Canada as a solution to problems of the American republic. According to Richards, Upper Canada would offer a white, free-soil republic.52 Yet, four facts gesture to active order-building by the patriot press through this language. First, such language was coming from a number of patriot editors with not only anti-slavery views but solid abolitionist credentials. Second, members of the patriot press were aware of the galling hypocrisy of professing the United

States as a land of liberty in contrast to the slavery of the Canadas when, for the case of chattel slavery, the opposite was true. For example, James Mackenzie wrote to his father complaining of the elder Mackenzie’s actions to paper over slavery in the United States.

James Mackenzie stated he “will never (as you have done) pretend to justify for a crime

51 Gerald Horne, Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight in the U.S. before Emancipation (New York: New York University Press, 2012); David Shields, “The Power to be Reborn,” The American Revolution Reborn, eds. Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 296. 52 Thomas Richards, Jr, “The Texas Moment: Breakaway republics and contested sovereignty in North America, 1836–46” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University, 2016), 20, 175-178. 176

by apologizing with the assertion that England is the greater criminal.”53 Third, as noted in Chapter 3, before, during, and after the Rebellion, patriots expressed support for the rights and wellbeing of racialized people. If the Canadas were to be a white republic as

Richards posits, it reflected only the desires of American patriots, as the provisional constitutions of Upper and Lower Canada explicitly guaranteed rights to Black and

Aboriginal residents.54 Fourth, in their calling out of British cruelty, patriots referenced atrocities perpetrated by the British against non-white peoples in the empire and cheered the destruction of a British army at their hands.

This rhetoric, then, constituted a choice by patriots to sacrifice their principles on racial justice for rhetorical expediency. To help build support for the patriot cause in the

U.S., patriot newspapers emphasized the suffering of the patriots. As part of this emphasis on suffering, the patriot press used old tropes from the American Revolution:

“the British, blacks, and Indians – the three bête noires of the early republic” in Richards’ words to help encourage sympathy and support from Americans.55 Patriots were also keen to foment conflict between the American government and Britain. Any support by them for abolition would not have endeared them to the many southern politicians leading America’s foreign relations.56 These choices around what sort of order would exist in exile had the effect of publicly coding the patriot community in the United States as white. This had significance for building a patriot order as well. As Jarett Henderson

53 Archives of Ontario, Mackenzie-Lindsey Fonds, James Mackenzie to William Lyon Mackenzie, 23 August 1839, cited in Gates, After the Rebellion, 84. 54 Georges Aubin ed., Robert Nelson: Déclaration D’Indépendance et Autres Écrits (1832-1848) (Montreal: Comeau & Nadeau, 1998), 28; Constitution 15 November 1837 p1 c2 clause 7, clause 21. 55 Richards, “Texas Moment,” 179. 56 Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy. (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2016). 177

has explained, white and male were crucial markers to move to responsible government and they were markers of the alternative republican order the patriot press was attempting to construct.57

Casting the Movement in a Revolutionary Tradition

The second major identifier after suffering, was placing the patriot movement in a broad revolutionary tradition. As already noted in Chapter 3, the patriot press in the

Canadas made frequent reference to the American Revolution, but increasingly there were gestures towards other revolutions as well. Historian Michel Ducharme has placed the Rebellion in the ongoing Atlantic Revolutions dating from the late eighteenth century.58 In one of the clearest instances of such gestures, Mackenzie’s call for independence, published as a handbill on December 1, 1837, began with an explicit reference to the revolutions in the Americas. Immediately under the title

“INDEPENDENCE!” Mackenzie included the passage: “There have been Nineteen

Strikes for Independence from European Tyranny, on the Continent of America. They were all successful!”59

After the exile of the patriot press to the United States, calls to an international revolutionary tradition became more prominent and more focused on recent revolutions that fit with how they defined themselves in exile while shifting away from a sole emphasis on the earlier Atlantic Revolutions with the exception of the American

57 Jarett Henderson, “Lives, Liberty, and the Struggle for Self-Government,” in “Macdonald Roundtable” Canadian Historical Review 94 no. 1 (2013): 105. 58 Michel Ducharme, Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des révolutions Atlantiques (1776-1838) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2010). 59 Colin Read and Ronald Stagg, The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: A Collection of Documents (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), 110. 178

Revolution itself. Of all the international revolutions from which to draw, the patriot press community in the United States focused on the Greek War of Independence, the

Polish November Uprising, the Texas Revolution, and Ireland.60 With the exception of revolts and revolutions in Ireland and the Thirteen Colonies, those in Greece, Poland, and

Texas all dated from the 1830s: the Polish November Uprising ended October 1831, the

Greek War of Independence ended in May1832, and Texas won its independence the year before the Rebellion.61 More importantly, these revolutions were in line with how patriots saw themselves and tried to construct their community in exile. The choice of the patriot press to highlight these conflicts speaks to its desire to emphasize a critique of monarchy and Britain and to remind its readers of the tradition of international assistance to revolutionary struggles. The situations in Greece and Poland involved revolts against what were perceived by Anglo-Americans as “foreign” and “despotic” .62

This placed these uprisings in line with American thinking on the American Revolution and placed Britain as a foreign despotic monarchy in its dealings with the Canadas. In addition, Greece and Texas occasioned substantial sympathy or outright assistance from

Americans, sympathy that could be emphasized by patriots when that same sympathy

60 Ducharme, Le concept de la liberté, 20; Wim Klooster Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York: New York University Press, 2009). Both geographically and temporally Greece and Poland do not fit the typology of the Atlantic revolutions not being on the Atlantic or occurring in the late 18th early 19th century wave of uprisings. 61 This facet of patriot revolutionary comparisons has not been investigated to the same extent as their Atlantic connections. Ruth Dunley mentions that “The Hunters were spurred on not only by the example of their forefathers in the Revolutionary War, but also by recent revolutionary activity in Greece, Poland, Italy and Belgium and, especially, in Texas.” Ruth Dunley, “A. D. Smith: Knight-errant of Radical Democracy” (PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2008), 67. 62 Even before the Rebellion, papers included fiction on the plight of Poland and Polish exiles. Missiskoui Post and Canadian Record 24 June 1835 p4 c1-4. 179

was not forthcoming for their cause in the Canadas.63 In the case of Greece, there had also been substantial assistance from British philhellinists, including providing Greek insurgents with a major loan and a number of individuals, most notably the poet Lord

Byron, going to fight in the Greek War of Independence.64

Patriots reached for examples that would link the experiences of Canada with these other places in a common analogy of lands suffering foreign oppression deserving of American aid. Such an emphasis revealed the patriot press’s conceptions of monarchy as cruel and despotic. Even before the outbreak of Rebellion violence, such comparisons had been made. The Toronto Patriot critiqued a comment made by reformer Marshall

Spring Bidwell about Upper Canada having as much liberty as Russian emperor Nicolas I claimed that Poland possessed.65 Such examples were renewed, modified, and amplified with the exile of the patriot press to the United States. As a case in point, the Toronto

Mirror, an Irish Catholic paper, made a controversial comparison between the official declaration that “order reigns in Lower Canada” with the declaration by the Russians that

“order reigns in Warsaw.” This was eagerly taken up by the Patriot’s Friend on the other side of the boundary as evidence of British oppression of the Canadas. In the United

States, such a comparison between Poland and the Canadas was not relegated to the margins as evidenced by the circulation of a full-page short story of “The Polish Wife: A story of the Revolution of 1831” about “the struggle between the brave Poles and their despotic masters.” Evidently somewhat popular, the Canadian Patriot included the story

63 Marios Byron Raizis and Alexander Papas, American poets and the Greek revolution, 1821–1828: A study in Byronic philhellenism (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1971). 64 William St Clair, The Greece Might Still Be Free. The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (Oxford University Press, 1972). 65 Patriot 16 May 1837 p3 c1-2. 180

in a “popular tales” section.66 The Patriote Canadien also included a copy of this story in both English and French.67 The story spoke to the tropes of suffering women as a mother witnesses the near execution of her son. Such tales tied in the material suffering of patriots in exile and the British in the Canadas to foreign, despotic, and cruel monarchical government.

The Patriot’s Friend declared that to merit assistance the people in the Canadas had to show the world “that they have a deep abhorrence of their oppressors and are determined to cast off the shackles and fetters of their vile task masters who wish to degrade them to the lowest standard of Russian serfs.”68 In a letter to the Albany Evening

Journal, republished in the Canadian Patriot, a refugee wrote that “Perpetual exile must be a sad fate, yet, I can think of one much worse, servitude.—If my dearest native land is to be made a new Poland, or a new Ireland, then shall I never again set foot upon its soil.”69 In a long poem in honour of the new year, 1839, the Bald Eagle referenced

British oppression in its execution of Hunter leader Nils von Schoultz by comparing it to the execution of Irish Rebellion leader Robert Emmet.70

In addition to casting the British administration in the Canadas as a cruel and despotic monarchy, such comparisons reminded readers that assistance had been afforded to those “oppressed lands.” References by the patriot press to this tradition of international revolutionary assistance took two forms. The first highlighted the foreign

66 Toronto Mirror quoted in the Patriot’s Friend 12 January 1839 p3 c3; Canadian Patriot 16 February 1838 p4. 67 The Patriote Canadien spread the story out over two issues. Patriote Canadien 21 August 1839 p1 c1-4 and 28 August 1839 p1c1-4. 68 Patriot’s Friend 12 January 1839 p3 c1. 69 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p2 c4. 70 Bald Eagle 1 January 1839 p1 c1–3. 181

assistance provided to American patriots during the American Revolution, calling

Americans to provide assistance to later-day patriots in the same manner and justifying the legitimacy of a revolution still in need of outside assistance. The second type of reference sought to compare the Canadas to other “oppressed lands” and highlight the outside aid that was provided when those other lands struggled for liberty.

There were multiple instances in the patriot press referencing the external support received by American patriots during the American Revolution. At the commencement of the second outbreak of insurrection in Lower Canada in November 1838, Mackenzie’s

Gazette copied a proclamation by Charles G. Bryant, ‘Grand Eagle’ of a patriot force, hoping to provide Lower Canadian rebels with assistance.71 On November 1, the force moved from Vermont into Lower Canada near Caldwell’s Manor. On November 5, 1838

Bryant issued a proclamation that framed revolutionary assistance in terms of the immaterial rewards associated with being a foreign volunteer and active participant in a paramilitary force. Referring to the “sons of noble sires” – as children of those who fought in the Revolution – he promised fame, such as that of Lafayette, for being known to posterity as examples of those who left their land to fight for liberty.72

The Bald Eagle contained a resolution of a patriot meeting in Cayuga County,

New York at which patriot supporters evoked the foreign assistance that had been

71 There was a small collection of “itinerant revolutionaries” that joined the expedition into lower Canada including two French officers and two Polish officers. Claude Galarneau, “Charles Hindenlang,” DCB; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 177. As with Von Shoultz, Bryant was a personal embodiment of the international revolutionary tradition in which the patriot press community placed itself. James Mundy et Earle Shettleworth Jr, The Flight of the Grand Eagle. Charles Bryant, Maine Architect & Adventurer (Augusta, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1977). The term “itinerant revolutionaries” comes from Janet L. Polasky, Revolutions Without Borders: the Call of Liberty in the Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). 72 Mackenzie’s Gazette 10 November 1838 p1 c2. Bryant’s proclamation also appeared in the Cobourg Star 20 November 1838 p1 c1. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 29 December 1838 p1c1. See Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 63–65; Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 149-150 for information on the proclamation and invasion. 182

provided to the American Revolution. However, on this occasion it was to claim the right to intervene. The meeting resolved:

that as the descendants of a noble band that dared to resist the oppressive acts of the mother country, and who aided by the sympathies and actions of such men as Lafayette, DeKalb, Kosciusko and a host of foreigners, gained the liberty we now enjoy, we claim the right as freemen to sympathize with, and assist our suffering brethren of Canada to break the yoke of oppression.73

Here the legacy of the American Revolution stood to both remind Americans of the external support received for their revolution as well as to affirm the appropriateness of providing aid in a later-day revolution.

Using the examples of Greece, Poland, and Texas, the patriot press evoked aid being afforded to other conflicts against foreign and despotic monarchies. For instance, the Bald Eagle contained a long discussion of the tradition of international assistance to

Greece and linked the struggle in Poland with the exploits of Nils von Schoultz, the patriot commander at the Battle of the Windmill.74 Von Schoultz presented himself in

North America as a Polish émigré. Although a Swede born in Finland, von Schoultz was indeed a veteran of the Polish November Uprising and thus became a personal embodiment of the international revolutionary tradition in which the patriots placed themselves.75

73 Bald Eagle 11 January 1839 p3 c1. 74 Bald Eagle 15 January 1839 p1-2. 75 Besides von Schoultz, there were three natives of Poland who took part in the Battle of the Windmill, including a former officer in the Polish army, Ernest Berends. Von Shoultz had promised to recruit among Polish emigrés in New York City and had limited success. Donald E. Graves, , Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill (Prescott: Friends of Windmill Point, 2001), 231, 235; Ronald J. Stagg, “Nils von Shoultz,” DCB. 183

Taking a position of official neutrality, the U.S. government in 1838 developed a stronger Neutrality Act in 1838 and Van Buren issued a proclamation strongly denouncing patriot activities in response to continued agitation.76 Faced with active countermeasures by the federal government, patriots evoked this international revolutionary tradition to protest the government’s actions. The Canadian Patriot, for instance, included a resolution from a patriot meeting in Newport, Vermont that stated

“That the right of assistance, afforded by Americans and other nations to Greece when at war with Turkey, Texas when at war with Mexico, not having been called in question, in our opinion it illy becomes this Government, to forbid our affording similar assistance to the patriots of Canada.”77

Another meeting in Philadelphia, reported in Mackenzie’s Gazette and at which both Theller and Mackenzie spoke, expressed similar sentiments. The meeting voted that

“American benevolence, which turned a willing ear to Greece, to Poland, and to Texas, will never be deaf to the cries of the houseless and homeless widows and orphans of the

Canadian martyrs.” Here patriots coupled the political suffering of Canadian “martyrs” with narratives of familial suffering, combining a tradition of international revolutionary assistance with a protective patriarchy.78 In his own newspaper, Mackenzie made these comparisons more explicit. In the December 1, 1838 issue of his Gazette, Mackenzie copied a letter from “A Friend to the Canadians” to the editor of the New York Gazette,

76 Guillet, 184; SUNY Oswego, Penfield Library Special Collections, Wood Family Papers MS040, Box 3, Folder 16 “ephemera,” Proclamation from President Van Buren, 21 November 1838. 77 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p3 c4. 78 Mackenzie’s Gazette 24 November 1838 p1 c1-2. 184

with Mackenzie giving it the title “Is Greece More Dear to the Citizens of New-York than Canada!”79

Mackenzie also carried a long article on the execution of Koniaski, a veteran of the Polish November Uprising. Mackenzie recounted Koniaski’s fortitude when he joked as he was shown the grave dug for him and requested that he not be blindfolded— a request denied by the Russians. Mackenzie used the tale to cast the British as crueler than the Russians: “Russian law is bad enough but it gave the Polish soldier a soldier’s trial and a soldier’s death. It was reserved for the whig hypocrites of the British Cabinet, who whine over Polish misery to give the gallant Von Schoultz the death of a dog. How is it that in this country (the U. S.) which boasts of freedom, the best supported editors, priasts[sic] and lawyers are the truest friends of English cruelty and the bitterest enemies of human rights?”80 Mackenzie focused on purported British sympathies for Poland and the hypocrisy given British conduct in the Canadas.

As well, patriots turned again to transnational and non-historical rights-based claims in this regard. The patriot press placed itself within an international revolutionary tradition, crafting arguments in favour of international assistance to other struggles against monarchies. Rights transcended national boundaries and limits. Historians have categorized the revolutions of 1760-1826 in Europe and the Americas as part of the wave of “Atlantic Revolutions.” However, with the exception of America and Ireland, the conflicts highlighted by the patriot press have not been categorized as Atlantic by

79 Mackenzie’s Gazette 1 December 1838 p234 c3. “A Friend to the Canadians” had asked the New York Gazette to reprint the proceedings of an 1823 meeting in support of Greek independence. The letter-writer hoped readers “will subscribe [donations to the Canadian cause] as liberally for the suffering Canadians as they did for the suffering Greeks.” 80 Mackenzie’s Gazette 8 June 1839 p368 c1. 185

scholars.81 The focus by the patriot press on Greece, Poland, and Texas points to the move away from Atlantic revolutions with the move to exile. Those revolutions of the

1830s against “foreign” “despotic” monarchies that received foreign assistance better fit what the patriot press was trying to achieve in exile. The move away from a purely

Atlantic revolutionary tradition echoes the changes noted in the last chapter around a wider radicalism that prefigured aspects of the later revolutions of 1848.

Having placed themselves within an international revolutionary tradition, patriots viewed it as the duty of Americans to offer them financial assistance and even to take up arms alongside them. They emphasized their continued suffering as the U.S. government and its citizens, in their view, abandoned this tradition. For example, rather than being supported, Mackenzie was jailed for violating American neutrality laws.82 The patriot press further complained of the federal government’s uneven enforcement of neutrality.

For the patriot press, it was outrageous that the United States would prevent American assistance to the Canadas after having tacitly permitted assistance to the revolution in

Texas. The patriot press blamed such disparate treatment on the undue influence of

Britain or the American South. Such critiques spoke to a negative conception of clandestine influence—as against open deliberation—that perverted the natural support of

Americans for spreading republicanism to the Canadas.

Such comparisons between the Canadas and Texas had been made before the

Rebellion, but appeared more prominently once the Rebellion had started. The Canadian

Patriot found a letter to the New York Express from “L.M.N.” that had been sent from

81 Ducharme, Le concept de la liberté, 20; Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World. Greece, Poland, and Texas do not fit into the time frame traditionally given for the Atlantic Revolutions and if one takes a geographical lens, Greece and Poland at the time were not on the Atlantic coastline. 82 Gates, After the Rebellion, Chapter 4. 186

Montreal in September, 1836. The writer was surprised that the “geographical position and political condition” of the Canadas did not excite public attention, yet “the resources and population of an immense country give place to the cause of a few “squatters” in

Texas.”83

In his Cleveland Bald Eagle, Samuel Underhill blamed the influence of Britain for keeping the American government from supporting revolution in the Canadas while turning a blind eye to Americans’ support for the revolution in Texas.84 Theller, in an article labeled “Neutrality,” also accused the U.S. government of being unduly influenced by Britain and of engaging in sectional favouritism. “In what” Theller asked “consisted the difference between helping the Canadians, and overrunning Texas, a Mexican

Province?” The response was “that, to gratify a base fear of England’s might and power, would ferret out from musty statute book, an obsolete law.” The Neutrality Act, in

Theller’s estimation, saw the U.S. government punish activities on its northern border, but not its southern one. Referencing the 1837 burning of the Caroline that took place at

Schlosser, New York, Theller warned those in power that “Michigan, with western New

York and Northern Ohio, will poll ten time the votes of Mississippi and Louisiana—and will REMEMBER THE UNATONED OUTRAGE AT SCHLOSTER![sic]”85 Theller saw the Neutrality Act as interfering with the American’s revolutionary tradition, but it was used selectively. In his view, Southerners were allowed to assist revolutions across their border but Northerners were denied the same rights.

83 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p1. 84 Bald Eagle 15 January 1839 p2 c1. 85 Spirit of ‘76 20 August 1839. 187

Like Theller, the noted patriot William Johnston thought it was the South that caused this differentiated treatment. Johnston had been disappointed in Mackenzie’s attack on the Whigs, highlighting in his letter that the Democrats were not friends of the patriots given their hypocrisy in acquiescing to filibustering in Mexico but not the

Canadas.86 In a published response to Johnston’s letter, Mackenzie noted that the comparison between the Canadas and Texas was perhaps not valid as there was no state in the former the filibusterers could join as patriots in neither Lower nor Upper Canada had been able to “keep a standard up anywhere.”87

As evidence of how Texas loomed large in the minds of members of the patriot press, in a number of instances patriot papers contained short positive notices on the situation in Texas. In one of its issues, the patriot Budget of Conneaut, Ohio noted that the Tennessee House of Representatives had passed resolutions supporting the annexation of Texas and in another issue provided information on preparations by Texans for another battle with Mexico.88 The Mercury and Buffalonian contained the short note in one issue that “All is prosperity in Texas, ‘the flower garden of the world.’”89 For its part, the

Lewiston Telegraph contained a short article on the discovery of “a beautiful specimen of native gold” in Texas that equaled the purity of the gold of Mexico or Peru.90 That the patriot press community in the United States felt that such snippets would be relevant and of interest to readers indicates a juxtaposition of the Canadas to Texas in the minds of

86 Mackenzie’s Gazette 15 September 1838 p146 c4. Johnston proffered that the disparity in treatment between patriots and Texas volunteers was because Van Buren was beholden to the South. 87 Mackenzie Gazette 15 September 1838 p147 c1. 88 Budget 31 January p3 c1; 29 January p3 c2. 89 Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p4 c3. 90 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p1 c5. 188

patriot editors and readers, a comparison which, as we will see, played out in transborder rhetorical conflict.

The patriots’ shock at the denial of revolutionary aid by Americans and especially the actions of state and federal authorities speaks to the vision of those who sought the aid of American private citizens, a vision that has not been analysed in the literature on filibusters.91 In his history of American involvement in Nicaragua, Michel Gobat argues that contrary to other Latin American nations of the period, the Nicaraguans embraced a positive image of Americanization which led them to induce filibuster William Walker and American colonists to join them. Only once Walker arrived were Nicaraguan conceptions shattered with Walker who instead brought an Americanization defined by violence and racial hierarchy. Similarly, Canadian patriots embraced a positive vision of the U.S. republic and only once in exile did the republic lose its luster.92 The patriots emphasized suffering to such an extent that they not only expected assistance but felt that they deserved it given the responsibility of Americans to assist republican revolutions.

The debate about how the Canadian Rebellion fit into the history of an international revolutionary tradition and paralleled the Texas Revolution, became another example of the transborder rhetoric with constitutionalists in the Canadas who pointed to the consistency between American actions in Texas and the Canadas: if one was just a land grab, so was the other. The comparison could serve constitutionalist ends. Grant, in

91 Robert E. May points to the invitation of Walker by the Nicaraguan Liberal party as indicative of filibustering being directed towards weak states. Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 86–89. 92 Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 21–29. This disillusionment of patriots with the United States after previously having a glowing view from the Canadas is evident with some of the patriots. Gates, After the Rebellion, 65; Armstrong and Stagg, “William Lyon Mackenzie,” DCB; Stephen Kenny, “Duvernay’s Exile in ‘Balenton’ : the Vermont Interlude of a Canadian Patriot, ” Vermont History 52, no. 2 (1984): 103– 122. 189

his Western Herald, wrote that American residents should explicitly acknowledge that they approved of the patriots attempt to “rob Great Britain of the Canadas in the same manner as you plundered too-submissive Mexico of her Texian possessions.”93 An Upper

Canadian writer to the Detroit Daily Advertiser also reminded U.S. readers that “Upper

Canada is not Texas, Upper Canadians are not Texans, and Great Britain is not Mexico” to highlight both the different levels of support for revolution and the difference between a powerful global empire and a weak state with multiple regions in rebellion.94 The

Journal of Commerce out of New York City carried an article about a “meeting in behalf of Canada,” which editorialized against U.S. filibustering.95 The St. Catharines Journal copied the article, presenting it as a statement against patriot filibustering.

Patriot responses to these charges were not as numerous as those involving chattle slavery, perhaps because Americans were the key audience. In one instance, Mackenzie brought up the dispute over the Maine boundary question as a counter-argument to constitutionalist critiques. In an article titled “Robbing Arsenals” Mackenzie wrote:

When a few Americans borrow from one of their own arsenals, after such an affair as that of the Caroline, a gun or two to be used in favor of Liberty, the British Tory papers in Canada, London, and New York set up a doleful howl about the partiality of American officers. Now the tables have turned and the plunderers of $100,000 value of American timber in Maine break up British arsenals to enable them to keep the territory and the spoils. Does [the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick] Sir J. Harvey complain!!96

93 Western Herald 22 May 1838 p110 c1. 94 Quoted in Roger L. Rosenstreter, Michigan’s Early Military Forces: A Roster and History of Troops Activated Prior to the American Civil War (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 299. 95 St. Catharines Journal 16 January 1838 p2 c3. 96 Mackenzie’s Gazette 9 March 1839 p1 c2. 190

In another instance, at the funeral of J. M. Wheelock who died of wounds at the Battle of the Windmill, Marcus Smith, the Presbyterian minister of Watertown, gave an address. In it, he argued that while it may have been a violation of neutrality, those who invaded should not be compared to “freebooters and pirates” as they had honest motives in believing the Canadians desired republicanism. In Smith’s view, they had been

“awakened” by watching other international revolutions and they believed “that every nation and people had a right to throw off an aristocratical government.”97

In their continued debate with constitutionalist papers in the Canadas, patriot papers spread ideas of the Rebellion within a broader revolutionary context and positioned themselves and their failed rebellion as part of a specific revolutionary tradition that emphasized monarchy as foreign, cruel, and despotic and that noted past international assistance afforded those revolutions. These political disputes became transborder through the survival of the patriot press in the United States and its continued conflict with constitutionalists papers in the Canadas. The focus of the patriot press on both suffering and the international revolutionary tradition stemmed from a desire to build legitimacy for their project in exile. They were not pirates, but revolutionaries.

They were not weak because many other revolutions, including the American, had relied on foreign assistance. Their penury was due to suffering at the hands of the British, and their racialized supporters and friends in the United States, not any personal or political failing.

Deliberation and Association

97 Mackenzie’s Gazette 2 March 1839 p289 c3, Graves, Guns Across the River, 238. 191

The third idea central to setting the boundaries of a patriot order was the high value placed on deliberation and association. These values, crucial to initial organizing along militarized lines as discussed in Chapter 2, remained deeply held by the patriots, even after having engaged in military violence. Not only did patriot initiatives emerge from voluntary associations, but the press also helped to sustain a voluntary ethos among patriots with its coverage and promotion of debating societies. Patriot editors often provided space for positive commentary on the propriety of literary and debating societies and were involved in organizing and participating in those debating societies and lecture clubs. Although shying away from partisan discourse, these debating societies could cover what might be termed “patriot” topics and the coverage of these associations reflected patriots’ belief in the values they expressed.

Resolutions of patriot public meetings, news of military engagements, and patriot editorializing often shared space with notices for debating societies. Like similar associations of their time, these societies met for lectures and debates on contemporary topics. The patriot Budget, of Conneaut, Ohio, carried an announcement for the Conneaut

Young Men’s Debating Society’s upcoming debate, on “has Ignorance and Superstition caused more bloodshed than Pride and Ambition?”98 The Bald Eagle announced a forthcoming debate by the Cleveland Lyceum with a more expressly political focus, namely whether Congress should abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.99

Announcements in the Spirit of ’76 for the Detroit Young Men’s Society included notices of debates concerning whether the state should limit interest rates and whether

98 The Budget 3 February 1838 p4. 99 Bald Eagle January 1 1839 p4 c1. 192

professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and the clergy should be required to divulge information concerning those in their care in a court of law.100 The Detroit Young Men’s

Society as well as the Rochester Young Men’s Association also organized gatherings for addresses on a diverse range of subjects from history, nature, astronomy, and theology.101

Patriot editors and organizers actively praised or even led these literary and debating societies. In the columns of his Spirit of ’76, Theller praised the local debating society, declaring that he had “the highest opinion of the importance and value of this society.” Theller announced he would attend the society now that the “more exciting topics” of the Michigan gubernatorial campaign were over “and our Canadian friends have finished their celebration of the ‘Battle of Windsor’.”102 In another issue, Theller advised that “we would say to all our readers, that there is no way, in which an evening can be more profitably or pleasantly spent” than at the Young Men’s Society.103 As a unique example of leading such societies, Benjamin Wait, a veteran of the Rebellion and a number of border raids, noted how he and other prisoners had formed a society for

“literary improvement” while imprisoned in Fort Henry, composing original lectures to deliver to each other.104

At Rochester, the local Young Men’s Association had a number of connections to patriots. Rochester postmaster, Democratic operative, and patriot Henry O’Reilly, in

100 Spirit of ’76 14 Dec 1839. Such a debate could speak to developing notions of patient confidentiality and lawyer-client privilege indicative in the growth of a liberal professional class. 101 Spirit of ’76 27 March 1839; 19 December 1839. PHOR, Box 4, Rolph to O’Reilly, 10 December 1838. 102 Spirit of ’76 6 December 1839. Theller was ironically referring here to the aftermath of the patriot invasion of Windsor on December 4, 1838, hence the italicized “friends.” One of the constitutionalist commanders, , shot five patriot prisoners causing a major controversy. Ed. R. Alan Douglas, John Prince: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1980), xxvi. 103 Spirit of ’76 7 February 1840. 104 Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman's Land: Written during Four Years Imprisonment for Political Offences Committed in Upper Canada (Buffalo: A. W. Wilgus, 1843), 89. 193

addition to his work organizing the stockpiling of materiel—including weapons—for the patriots, was one of the lead organizers of the Rochester Young Men’s Association in

1838, becoming its president.105 While corresponding with Mackenzie and working with other Rochestarians to supply aid to the patriots, O’Reilly also worked to find lecturers for the society’s semi-weekly addresses. For instance, O’Reilly made multiple requests to

John Rolph, an exile of the Rebellion and former associate of Mackenzie, to lecture at the

Rochester Young Men’s Association. Rolph acquiesced; the calendar for the 1839-1840 season indicated that he was to give three lectures: one on astronomy, one on science, and another on a subject that had yet to be determined.106 The fact that Rolph, who had played a controversial role in the uprising in Toronto, did not lecture on subjects such as the

Rebellion or the Canadas is possibly due to a convention or outright policy in certain debating society to avoid obviously controversial topics.107 However, as will be seen, debating societies did embrace on other occasions patriot topics. Rolph’s relationship with the Young Men’s Association was testy. Rolph complained that O’Reilly was too demanding, first refusing O’Reilly’s “unwelcome command” to give an address and later refusing to send his address to be published in the proceedings as it was “far too unfinished.”108 This testy relationship and the avoidance of topics on the Rebellion could have stemmed from Rolph’s dispute with Mackenzie over each other’s conduct in the

105 Dexter Perkins, “Henry O’Reilly” Rochester History 8, no. 1 (1945): 11. 106 PHOR, Box 4, Rolph to O’Reilly, 10 December 1838, Rolph to O’Reilly, 25 September 1839, and Rolph to O’Reilly [undated] 1840; New York Historical Society, Henry O’Reilly Papers (HORP), Series X, Box 43, Folder 17, Printed Material: 1839–1840, “Rochester Athenaeum, Young Men’s Association. Arrangements, 1839--1840.” The season of lectures of the Rochester Young Men’s Association ran from December to May. 107 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 83. 108 PHOR, Box 4, Rolph to O’Reilly [undated] 1840, Rolph to O’Reilly [no date] April 1840. 194

Rebellion and O’Reilly’s heavy support for the latter.109 However, it is significant that

Rolph was able to overlook such divisions with Mackenzie in the context of a voluntary association. His discussions with O’Reilly in the context of speaking at the Young Men’s

Association demonstrates some engagement with patriots overlooked by past scholars.110

Hestor L. Stevens, a fellow member of the Rochester patriot committee, also had a history in voluntary associations. Stevens had dabbled in temperance organizing, being elected secretary to the Monroe County Temperance Society in 1830 before the society took a stand against total abstinence.111 In addition to serving alongside O’Reilly on the committee, Stevens acted as one of the assistant directors of the Young Men’s

Association.112 William Lyon Mackenzie also used the foreign newspapers received at the Rochester Young Men’s Association to gauge the reach of his Gazette in Europe.113

Literary and debating societies were increasing in number in the period and contemporaries in the press spoke to their usefulness.114 Here patriots concurred and continued to assist in their development.

Some literary and debating societies did discuss topics of resonance to the patriot cause or patriot papers engaged with these subjects in such a way as to make them pertinent. For instance, a lecture at the Rochester Young Men’s Association prompted a letter from “Scrutator” to Mackenzie’s Gazette to put a patriot twist on the debate about

“moral force versus physical force.” The lecturer had asserted “that knowledge unaided

109 Read and Stagg, Rolph DCB. Explanatory footnote on Rolph’s contested and convoluted involvement: had he agreed to be part of the “executive”? how much did he know.? 110 G. M. Craig, “John Rolph,” DCB. 111 Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, [1978] 2004), 133. 112 HORP, Series X, Box 43, Folder 17, Printed Material, “Rules and schedule for 1839-40 Young Men’s Assoc.” 113 Mackenzie’s Gazette 8 June 1839 p368 c3. 114 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 84–90. 195

by physical force, was all-sufficient to liberate people from the evils of mis-government.”

Scrutator differed, suggesting that knowledge produced an understanding of one’s situation and compelled the use of force to enjoy those rights, surmising that “Moral force is the power of virtue, not the knowledge of things.” Here, a reader, thought to be a member of the patriot press, intervened in a debate at the Young Men’s Society to argue for the existence of civic virtue as a key component of republicanism.115 Mackenzie criticized a similar subject chosen in Upper Canada, noting that “on the 19th of April, the

Kingston Young Men’s Society were to meet to discuss the question, “What are the excuses, or are there any, that make war justifiable?” A very suitable question but the suspension of the habeas corpus act will prevent a fair investigation.”116 Here Mackenzie rejected the idea that this debate in the Canadas could be truly deliberative due to the suspension of certain legal rights and implied that war—and by extension the

Rebellion—was justifiable.

In a similar vein, in his Spirit of ’76, Theller mused about his desire to take the place of George Dawson, the Whig editor of the Detroit Advertiser, in a debate at the

Young Men’s Society about what he termed “military matters.” Teller claimed only his age precluded him from taking part.117 Regardless, the article speaks to patriots giving their own interpretations to debates they found pertinent in these societies. Not surprisingly, the literary club of patriot and Rebellion prisoners turned to relevant

115 Mackenzie’s Gazette 15 June 1839 p372 c1-3. For the importance of virtue to republicanism see Ducharme, Le concept de la liberté, 133-134 and Peter J. Smith, “Civic Humanism Versus Liberalism: Fitting the Loyalists In,” in Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? ed. Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995), 111. 116 Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 May 1838 p5 c1. 117 Spirit of ’76 7 February 1840. There had been a change in the program and given that Theller made no specific reference to the subject, it is difficult to determine what the topic was. 196

subjects. In his memoir, Wait claimed that his first address to his fellow prisoners in their literary society was on “patriotism,” stating that for him “it was a subject that had actuated every nerve of my system, and reduced me to my present slavish situation.”118

Finally, ideas around the propriety of uniting in a voluntary association, in the abstract, held credence for patriots. The Bald Eagle included a running advertisement for a bookseller selling copies of none other than de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with its positive commentary on voluntary associations and the press.119 William Lyon

Mackenzie had read Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and often read the Life and

Essays of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, both of which discussed the nature and benefits of association.120 In Detroit, the Young Men’s Society held a debate about the current structure of Michigan’s internal improvements. In a commentary to his readers, Theller stated that “we are informed that the debate was full of interest, and ably conducted –that statistical facts, and practical remarks, were thrown forth valuable to become acquainted with.” Theller noted that the decision to abolish the current structure of internal improvements was “worthy of being copied by a higher body.” Such rhetoric echoed the principle of a rational state implementing what was decided by the public deliberation of facts and information. This public deliberation was between equal opinions whose merits were decided in a forum that mimicked the rules and forms of state deliberation.121 Such

118 Wait, Letters, 89. 119 This advertisement began in the second surviving issue and continues until the last surviving issue. Bald Eagle 28 December 1838 p4 c3; 1 January 1839 p4 c3; 4 January 1839 p4 c3; 8 January 1839 p4 c3; 11 January 1839 p4 c3; 15 January p4 c3. 120 Lindsey, Life and Times, Volume 2, 309. The knowledge of Mackenzie’s reading habits comes from a list of books read by him between 1806 and 1819 published as an appendix by Lindsey. See Alexis Keller, “Tocqueville”, translated by Philip Stewart, in A Montesquieu Dictionary [online], directed by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS Lyon, September 2013, Accessed 12 January 2017. http://dictionnaire- montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/1377636456/en for links between Tocqueville and Montesquieu. 121 Spirit of’76 6 December 1839. 197

commentary could, in addition, be an implied criticism by Theller of the political situation in Michigan.122 Patriots recognized that these specific literary and debating societies were part of a larger pattern of local literary societies across the United States.

Theller hoped that the Young Men’s Society of Detroit would “take a high rank among the multitude of kindred associations in the Land.”123

Literary and debating societies had resonance for the patriot press community which displayed a continued belief in the benefits of liberal voluntary organizing, not secret military organization, as historians have more typically emphasized. The belief in these benefits was also part of a critique of monarchy. Rather than mutual benefit and deliberation, patriots equated monarchical empire with aristocracy and rule by a “clique.”

Patriots used the term “tory” to express these criticisms of monarchy and empire. “Tory” did not only apply to Britons, but carried accusations of self-interested and unqualified leadership and living off the work of others. Such rule was violent as it was maintained by the ignorance of the populace and by brute force.124

122 As seen in Chapter 3, Theller was moving to become more of a Democrat in the Spirit of ‘76. Theller was also wading into the major debate over the “American system,” a program of internal improvements such as canals developed by Whig senator Henry Clay, which was controversial at the time. 123 Spirit of ’76 5 December 1839. The Young Men’s Society itself seems to have held a similar view of its self-importance, hosting an address “on the advantages of such an association as the Detroit Young Men’s Society” by a Reverend Professor Fitch. 124 The use of “tory” in certain cases also constituted an attack in the patriot press on a U.S. resident’s British origins. Underhill’s complaint against Ward’s grocery store was that it contained “six or seven rank British TORIES, who make it their business to abuse every Patriot who comes within hearing distance of their Tory slang.” In this example, the specificity of Underhill’s use of “British Tories” to describe the individuals in question may suggest a usage based on national origin and not solely politics. In another instance, a member of the patriot press used “tory” specifically as an epithet for British subjects in the United States. In his Spirit of ’76, Theller attacked the voluntary organization the “Detroit Friendly Society of Old Countrymen.” Theller cast society members as not only “Tory men” but also “BRITISH SUBJECTS” and many of the members as involved in an “alleged conspiracy” over the winter of 1838- 1839 to aid Britain in the event of war with the United States. Such an attack speaks to Theller, in this instance, combining a critique based in voluntarist values with one of national origin. Spirit of ‘76 17 August 1839; Bald Eagle 21 December 1838 p3 c3. 198

The use of the terms tory, , and loyalist as epithets by the patriot press for constitutionalists and their supporters—real or imagined—spoke to the emphasis the patriot press placed on the monarch in British colonial government.125 Such emphasis on only one portion of the colonial constitution evinces how patriots perceived the colonial administration as under the direct control of every whim of the monarch. Patriots perceived an empire unresponsive and unaccountable to the Canadas, continuing on the continent through imposition by force. Both criticisms rested on the contention that empire and monarchy were not mutual and deliberative.

Samuel Underhill frequently labelled his U.S. opponents Tories. At his most accusatory—in a single column, of a single issue—Underhill cast the Nantucket Inquirer as “the most deadly TORY paper that we have received”; Ward’s grocery store as “A

DEN OF TORIES”; “Our friend of the [Cleveland] Herald and Gazette” as “a clever fellow and a Tory”; dared another Cleveland editor, A. H. Curtis, to respond to the charge of being a Tory; and noted that “T. Johnson don’t feel disposed to satisfy the public that he is not a TORY!” The reasons given were as varied as the targets: Curtis was accused of reading taking newspapers without paying for them, and the Nantucket Inquirer was targeted for its calls on the U.S. government to apprehend and hang all refugees.126 For calling opponents tories, both Underhill and Nichols had their press destroyed making

125 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p2 c4. 126Bald Eagle December 21 1838 p3 c3. Thomas Low Nichols deployed the use of tory in one of his many attacks on the Whig Mayor of Buffalo Hiram Pratt stating that “None but a deep dyed tory vote for Hiram Pratt.” Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p1 c1; Michael F. Rizzo, Through the Mayors’ Eyes: Buffalo, New York 1832–2005. (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Enterprises, 2005), 20–22. For the norms and practices around copying and exchanging news among American editors of the period see Laura J. Murray, “Exchange Practices among Nineteenth-Century US Newspaper Editors: Cooperation in Competition,” in Putting Intellectual Property in Its Place: Rights Discourses, Creative Labor, and the Everyday, ed. Laura J. Murray, S. Tina Piper, and Kirsty Robertson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 86–109. 199

suffering as a marker of “patriot” that much more concrete.127 Mackenzie complained of the criticisms leveled at the patriots by “the British Tory papers in Canada, London, and

New York.”128 Such complaints were not without foundation as support for the constitutionalist cause did exist in the United States. The Western Herald appears to have been popular enough on both sides of the Detroit frontier that Grant had an agent for subscriptions in Detroit.129 The patriot press perceived British and constitutionalist attacks from both Canada and the United States as one despite the border.

As it was applied extensively without regard to citizenship or national origin, what did “tory” actually signify for patriots besides providing a broad marker for “not one of us?” “Tory” also encompassed the negative perception by the patriot press of monarchy based on its voluntarist values. The editor of the Canadian Patriot, Hiram

Blanchard, provided his readers with an article “Who are Tories” that captured the voluntarist meaning of its own causes. Blanchard cast tories into two categories: “those who are well informed and know their cause to be unjust, and those who believe the

127 Following his accusation of Curtis’ “spunging” of newspapers, Underhill continued “Mr. C. has said that if the Eagle fellows call him a Tory he would call up and give ‘em a licking. You are a Tory Mr. C. NOW COME ON.” Curtis did come on. One of his friends recounted in a letter his participation in the expedition to trash the Bald Eagle office. According to the friend, Underhill had attacked “the private character” of Curtis “in a most foul and libelous manner,” Curtis, the friend, and others “decided that the whole establishment was a nuisance and ought to be demolished.” The group attacked the Bald Eagle office and pounded the press “as fine as the type” with a sledge-hammer. Underhill thus brought a republican/anti- republican dichotomy to an existing conflict with a local political figure, and violence was one of the consequences. However, D. W. Cross states that it was rather the charge that Curtis had driven a women in Rochester into “a notorious brothel.” A similar accusation resulted in a similar result for Thomas Low Nichols of the Mercury and Buffalonian. Soon after Nichols wrote that “none but a deep dyed tory [would] vote for Hiram Pratt,” he was threatened. After refusing to back down, Pratt’s supporters destroyed the office of the Mercury and Buffalonian. Nichols kept up attacks on Pratt, eventually being imprisoned for libel, after which he published a book on his suffering at the hands of Pratt. Ohio Historical Society, “Cleveland Riots,” VFM 407, Duncan to E. Ned. Morgan, 22 January 1839; D. W. Cross, “The Log Book I.: The Death of the Bald Eagle” Magazine of Western History 7, no. 1 (1887): 618; Daily Mercury and Buffalonian 13 March 1839 p2 c1; Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 March 1839 320 c2; Thomas L. Nichols, Journal in Jail […] (Buffalo: A. Dinsmore, 1840). 128 Mackenzie’s Gazette 9 March 1839 p1 c2. 129 Western Herald 31 July 1838 p189 c2 200

assertions of the before mentioned, and think them honest, and believe their cause to be just. The former adhere to toryism and strive to perpetuate it by every means in their power, for the advantages they have received, or those they expect to receive.”130 The argument that certain individuals clung to their tory ways for personal advantage combined patriot criticisms based on race and class. Tories were concerned with personal advantage, not principle or equality, be it rum, money for scalps, office holder privileges, or pensions. Thomas Low Nichols in his Mercury and Buffalonian provided the starkest version of this definition. In a column of short notices and phrases, Nichols included two definitions each separated by a line: “PATRIOT.—A lover of his country and of liberty” below on a separate line “TORY.—A monarchist and aristocrat.”131 Julien Mauduit argues that rather than a conflict between republican and monarchist as had been the case in 1776 and 1812, patriots conceived of their struggle as between “true republicans” regardless of nationality and “aristocrats.” The particular use of “tory” by the patriot press, by contrast, demonstrates that those ideas of “true republican” versus “aristocrat” were still intimately bound up with the older notions of the struggle between monarchy and republic.132 For the patriot press, “tory” was tied to monarchy and privilege. In turn, monarchy was tied to violence, unqualified rule, and the lack of reasoned deliberation.

The Canadian Patriot re-published a letter from an unnamed refugee in exile in

Franklin County, New York to his father in the Albany Evening Journal. The letter writer

130 Canadian Patriot 16 February 1838 p3 c1. “Cause” here is used in the abstract pointing to patriot understanding of monarchy as a project being maintained through exertions of “tories” rather than an organic republic. The Lewiston Telegraph copied the Canadian Patriot’s “Who Are Tories” speaking to this categorization being accepted by others in the patriot press community. Lewiston Telegraph 25 April 1838 p2 c5. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 12 May 1838 p5 c2, and 29 December 1838 p1 c1 for similar sentiments. 131 Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p2 c3. 132 Mauduit, “Vrais républicains,” 349. 201

criticized what he understood to be the oppression and destruction wielded by the British to maintain their authority. He wrote that “all possible outrages and violences have been perpetuated by a brutal soldiery. Wherever they fought, and in many instances, even where they did not, robbery, pillage, arson, crimes to women, and murder, (all the lawless warfare of barbarians) followed them in their train.”133 In the same letter, the writer stated that he was in a better position than others to avenge those wronged because he was not the head of a family, echoing conceptions of patriarchal duty—although not tied to heading or protecting women within a household.134 Beyond highlighting the brutality on which the survival of empire rested and the concomitant suffering under monarchy, this critic turned to the common ploy of using gendered tropes to emphasize that suffering.

When reporting on the executions of patriot prisoners, the Patriot’s Friend copied the

Daily Buffalionian stating that “the Kingston Chronicle of 20th ult. deprecates any more executions of the Prescott prisoners ‘they would not add to the dignity of the empire;’ and intimates pretty strongly that the ‘most sanguinary governments are often the weakest.’

That last sentence expresses our ideas of the military despotism in the Canadas, very exactly.”135 To these patriot papers, the Kingston Chronicle had inadvertently revealed the violence on which British authority in North America rested.

Beyond specific instances in the Rebellion, patriots in the press contrasted order in the Canadas based on suffering from empire, hierarchy, and violence to an emphasis on self-taught white men, republicanism, and self-organizing as evident in their program in the U.S. “Azro,” a letter writer to the Budget, stated that “in turning the pages of

133 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p2c4 134 Ibid. c5. 135 Patriot’s Friend 12 January 1839 p1. 202

history […] proscriptions, racks, and torturers, have in the most enlightened nations been the companion of Princely courts.” Turning to the Canadas, he asked readers to “Look to the Provinces, and see if happiness is there; several thousand of their inhabitants, for merely expressing their opinions are doomed to cells and chains; torn from their family and friends, to waste away their lives on the miserable pittance of bread and water.” In a not so subtle linkage with fallen ancient empires, Azro also wrote that “neither is

[happiness] to be found in Tartary, Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Can it be found in the land of the free? Yes; She guilds her magnificent temples, and gently zephyrs waft her sweet perfume”136

As noted earlier, ideas of who could partake in the public deliberation that defined republics was circumscribed by racial and gendered boundaries. These boundaries extended to the patriots’ critique of monarchy in the press as a system of government that relied on the rule of those they felt was unqualified to deliberate—the Queen, Blacks, and

First Nations. Like race, the patriot press deployed gendered tropes in their critique of monarchy as non-deliberative. Not only was monarchy the rule of one, but in Britain it was the rule of Queen Victoria in particular, who was seen as unqualified both as a woman and because of her youth. Since at least the 1820s in Upper Canada, behaviour and traits coded as feminine were used derisively in the public sphere against opponents.137 Reformers and patriotes had decried Queen Victoria’s competence and the appropriateness of female governance, or had attacked constitutionalists for their

136 Budget 3 February 1838 p3 c2. 137 Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women, 13. 203

dependence, a lesser quality associated with femininity. These lines of attack increased in exile.138

At a patriot meeting in Newport, Vermont, two resolutions used the epithet

“petticoat government.” As with the tactics of the reformers and patriotes in the Canadas, the term was used to feminize and thus undermine monarchical authority.139 The first resolution called for “all professed friends of liberty” to “afford protection to such as may have fled from the tyrannical “Petticoat Government” of the Canadas.” The second was a denunciation of the destruction of the Caroline by “tyrannical officers, soldiers, and other subjects, of Her Majesty’s Ladyship, John Bull, (acting under Petticoat authority).”140 In line with the second resolution, the patriot press also attacked those men who took council from women. The Patriot’s Friend attacked the Governor of Lower Canada, Sir

John Colborne, for breaking with gendered understandings of manly deliberation. Instead of citizens (coded male) and a wide range of opinions, according to the Buffalo

Commercial Advertiser, the Montreal Herald had complained that “Sir John Colborne is surrounded by a parcel of old women, both in petticoats and in trowsers, whose influence over him is sacrificing his high reputation for political sagacity and knowledge of human

138 The personal attacks on Queen Victoria were far more prevalent and violent in Lower Canada than Upper Canada. Nevertheless, newspapers in Upper Canada did include attacks on the Queen. Allan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1993), Chapter 7; Allan Greer, “La république des homes, les Patriotes de 1837 face aux femmes.” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 44 no. 4 (1991): 507-528; Cecilia Morgan, “‘When Bad Men Conspire, Good Men Must Unite!’: Gender and Political Discourses in Upper Canada, 1820s-1830s,” in Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, eds. Kathleen McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999). 139 Interestingly the specific attack of “petticoat government” does appear, however much less as often, in both Lower and Upper Canada before the Rebellion. In Lower Canada, an American sympathiser used this phrase in the countryside at St Athanase around the time of the Lower Canadian battles of November and December 1837. For Upper Canada the reformist British Whig of Kingston covered a local procession in honour of Queen’s Victoria’s ascension. It simply noted that the procession had taken place and that it was “mean and pitiful to the extreme” and suggested the reason was Kingston’s dislike of being “under petticoat government.” Greer, Patriots and the People, 191; British Whig 10 August 1837 p3 c4. 140 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p3 c4. 204

nature”.141 The Patriot’s Friend made reference to trowsers to mock this council as

“unnatural” and gender non-conformist. Mackenzie copied from the Morning Chronicle an article that the Marchioness of Normanby was the real power moving Queen Victoria between ministers during the Bedchamber Crisis. Included with the article was a poem on government instability: “But whate’er the decision, I think we may say, / That henpecked

John Bull yields to petticoat sway.”142 Not only British politicians and administrators were under “petticoat” control. The Bald Eagle included an “Eleventh Commandment.—

M. Van Buren has done as much as to command the Government officers (post masters and all) that “You must express your sympathy in favour of the ‘darling Queen and

Tories, or resign. Well as a matter of course, they shout, “God Save the Queen!!””143

Now it was also U.S. federal office holders who were under the sway of not only the

British monarch but a young woman.

The singling out of Victoria for special rebuke was a product of the patriot press’s commitment to republican deliberation. As Marilyn Randall has noted, Victoria’s ascension was treated by patriot press in Lower Canada as both a complete reversal of the natural order and proof of the problems of hereditary monarchy.144 In response to this anomaly patriots offered government by republican citizens. In her study of the gendered language of the Rebellion, Cecilia Morgan argues that radical reformers cast the Queen

(and by extension monarchy and empire) as “the antithesis of the upright, honest, and

141 Patriot’s Friend January 12 1839 p2. 142 Morning Chronicle copied in Mackenzie’s Gazette 8 June 1839 p368 c2. 143 Bald Eagle 28 December 1838 p4 c1. 144 Marilyn Randall, Les femmes dans l’espace rebelle: Histoire et fiction autour des rébellions de 1837 et 1838 (Montreal: Éditions Nota bene, 2013), 76. 205

virtuous man the reformers had chosen as their symbol.”145 For Allan Greer, such attacks stemmed from a “profoundly gendered republican concept of citizenship.”146

The violence and unqualified rulers that defined monarchy were evidence of that sytem of government’s incompatbility with voluntarist values. To contrast the problems of monarchy with the benefits of republicanism, in 1838 Blanchard compared the successful 1834-1836 campaign for the creation of a Senate in Vermont, with the Lower

Canadian campaign to establish an elective Legislative Council. 147 He outlined how, to establish a Senate, the Vermont legislature passed an act which referred the question to

“the PEOPLE.” Voters then elected delegates to a constitional convention and Blanchard described the scene as follows: “the Senators have been quietly elected; no noise; no trouble.” However, he then compared the passing of the act with the move for similar changes in Lower Canada:

In using their constitutional rights to accomplish their views, our fellow-citizens have been shot down in our streets by an armed soldierly, the blind tools of a fanatical faction, opposed to the wishes of the country. Year after year we have to record political murders, or violent political persecutions. Governors have come among us only to have their reputations ruined, while the peace of the country is destroyed, industry disturbed, and public improvements arrested, by the obstinacy with which ignorant men, at a distance from the Province, or stranger to, and unconnected with the country, dabbling in what does not concern them, have used their influence in opposing the legitimate wishes of those who own the soil, and have no other country but this.148

145 Morgan, “When Bad Men Conspire,” 26. 146 Greer, Patriots and the People,198. 147 State of Vermont. Report of the Legislative Apportionment Board: The 2001 Tentative Plan for the Vermont Senate. Accessed 5 February, 2015. http://www.leg.state.vt.us/reports/02redistricting/LAB_ Senate.pdf. 148 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p3 c2-3. 206

Violence, obstruction, ignorance, the arbitrary decisions of a small faction, the disconnect with popular appeal: these were Blanchard’s concerns and also the patriot criticism of the constitutionalist cause. To the idea of ignorance, Blanchard attached a critique of empire.

Monarchy was far away, unconnected with and without understanding of the Canadas.

For constitutionalists, it was republicanism instead that was characterized by violence and arbitrariness. The constitutionalist response to these patriot criticisms continued the debate in the press from the Canadas and demonstrates that, even after the

Rebellion, both patriots and constitutionalists used voluntarist values as benchmarks for an effective society. Constitutionalists viewed the violence of the patriots in cross border raids as symptomatic of the absence of the rule of law they felt was intrinsic to the

American government. Terms used included “lawless anarchists” and “piratical blackguards.”149 Such terms of lawlessness, violence, and anarchy cast the patriots as criminals, not revolutionaries—and, by extension, cast the republicanism they fought for in the same light.

The rule of the “sovereign mob” in the United States, according to constitutionalists, left the United States a weak state and promoted violence amongst its citizens and across the border. Constitutionalists equated the United States government with mob—and therefore arbitrary and unreasoning—rule. A letter writer to the constitutionalist Toronto Patriot cast the Governor of Michigan, Stevens T. Mason, as

“the boast and idol of a vile mob.” The Patriot, for its part, cast the U.S. government as the “most sovereign mob” and noted that “a man differing from the multitude on any

149 Patriot 30 October 1838 p2 c1-2; Western Herald 1 May 1838 p86 c3. 207

favorite topic of public opinion” could face mob violence.150 Grant, when writing about assaults on three British officers in Detroit, linked violent incidents with mob rule and decried any official denunciations as empty rhetoric.

Was this [assaulting British officers] becoming? “O, no,” say the knowing ones, with a sly Yankee grin, well understood by the rabble, “the authorities did not sanction this.” Pray who are the authorities? The mob? If so, the authorities committed it, and the mob (i.e. the authorities) have most grossly violated the faith of the mob Government; but if the mob have acted in opposition to the authorities, one thing is certain; either that the authorities are insufficient to control the mob, or they covertly connive at their doings.—Thus has the glory of the great Republic departed. We stick you then upon either “horn of this dilemma.” Are you too weak to control the sovereign people? Then, in the name of high Heaven, make no more treaties. Give no more assurances of “amity” and “neutral relations,”—confess the rottenness of you republican institutions, and your inability to control the despotism of “His Majesty the mob!151

For Grant, any U.S. promises of respecting sovereignty, international law, and the boundary rang hollow as the “authorities” and the “mob” were one. Patriot critiques of monarchy also rang hollow as the U.S. too had a king, however it was the absolutist mob and not the balanced monarchy of the British constitution.

Arguments over monarchy and republicanism crossed and re-crossed the border.

The patriot press, in response to constitutionalist dislike of republicanism, emphasized desertions from the British as revealing both the Army’s apparent lack of support for monarchy as well as the violent military control patriots perceived was responsible for solidifying monarchy in the Canadas. For both sides, the charge of instability in the

150 Patriot 30 March 1838 p3 c1-2, p4 c6. 151 Western Herald 22 May 1838 p110 c1. 208

opposing system of government harkened back to criticisms leveled around the period of the American Revolution.152 Patriots were quick to turn to the American Revolution and the War of 1812 to remind constitutionalists of Britiain’s past track record of invasions of the United States as proof of the “land of liberty’s” stable path.153 The patriot press, however, concentrated on desertions of British troops to the United States as it was the clearest evidence of both military weakness as well as the lack of popular support for monarchy. Patriot editors, especially William Lyon Mackenzie, tracked the flow of deserters to the United States. A letter from a correspondent in Toronto to Mackenzie’s

Gazette contained the passage: “the desertion in the army to which you have so often alluded, has now increased to such a degree as to give serious alarm to our government.”

Mackenzie highlighted the passage with 10 manicules.154 The Canadian Patriot quoted the Buffalo Star that so many desertions were occurring that “John Bull can hardly count so securely upon thrashing Uncle Sam, as some of his Canadian editors have threatened.”155 As Alan Taylor notes, in the contest between republicanism and monarchy in North America, contemporaries recognized desertion as an effective metric for determining popular support. Speaking of the War of 1812, he notes that “in a war of persuasion and conversion, commanders struggled to retain their men while enticing deserters from the enemy. Generals measured their fortunes in the ebb and flow of deserters.”156 The boundary remained porous but continued to mark a transition between

152 Ann Gorman Condon, The Envy of the American States: The Loyalist Dream for New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB: New Ireland Press, 1984), x; McNairn, Capacity to Judge, Chapter 1; Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 5. 153 Canadian Patriot 2 February 1838 p3 c5. 154 Mackenzie’s Gazette August 18 1838 p1 c4. See also Volunteer 15 May 1841 p3 c2. 155 Canadian Patriot 16 February 1838 p3 c4. 156 Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 333. 209

monarchy and republic. Beginning in the 1840s, the use of local militia and volunteer companies increased on the frontier of British North America partially from fears British regulars would desert if posted to the border.157

In the patriot press, desertions were symbolic of desire in the Canadas for republicanism instead of monarchy. Deserters chose the U.S., while patriots had been forced there. A refugee letter-writer to Mackenzie’s Gazette from Detroit wrote of four soldiers that had deserted across the river. The writer noted the four “declared that the whole of the troop on our frontier would desert to-morrow if they knew how to go about it. They are harassed to death – one half of them constantly watching the other half.”158

For the writer, monarchy kept control through “harassing” the troops who, when allowed to speak openly, opted for republican government. Theller’s Spirit of ’76 included a report that part of the night watch at Sandwich, “with muskets, and all the equipage of soldiers on duty, […] had come over to enlist in the patriot service. Of course we enrolled them and put them on duty.” Theller continued: “We find good situations for every decent fellow that throws himself upon us for protection, and especially those who treated us respectfully when we were honored by the numerous escorts Her Majesty so politely furnished us, when on our visit to her dominions.”159 In this article British soldiers chose not only republicanism but to join the patriot cause. As has been noted earlier, Theller had been captured in a failed patriot invasion. Theller’s reference to his good treatment may be seen as an ominous hint to the British authorities that he had found a sympathetic

157 Lindsay Campbell, “Governance in the Borderlands: Upper Canadian Legal Institutions,” in Freedom’s Conditions in the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands in the Age of Emancipation, ed. Tony Freyer and Lyndsay Campbell (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 130. Peter Burroughs, “Tackling Army Desertion in British North America” Canadian Historical Review 61, no. 1 (1980): 28–68. 158 Mackenzie’s Gazette 4 May 1839 p2 c3. 159 Spirit of ’76 14 September 1840. 210

ear in his dealings with British soldiers when in captivity. The physical border came to be more significant to the patriots after the Rebellion: it protected patriots, offered “liberty” to soldiers (and to slaves moving in the other direction) even as a transborder public was being sustained in the press.160

Conclusion

After its creation, the patriot press community engaged in a continued conflict with the constitutionalist press in the Canadas and it used rhetoric to define a community united by suffering, part of an international revolutionary tradition, and committed to the ideals of voluntary organizing. Based on these traits, they crafted arguments in defence of the patriot movement. The patriot press cast their suffering as partially perpetrated by racialized opponents, critiqued U.S. state interference in patriot attempts to assist revolution in the Canadas, and developed a patriot definition of “tory” that embodied their criticism of monarchy as violent, arbitrary, and unstable. Constitutional and anti- patriot papers responded to each argument. They pointed to the loyalty of racialized peoples given slavery and the persecution of Aboriginal peoples in the United States, cast patriot assistance as a land grab rather than assistance for a revolting people, and cast republicanism as violent, arbitrary, and unstable. In response, the patriot press emphasized desertions by British soldiers as evidence of the weakness of monarchy and the popular desire for republicanism.

160 See Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 112–113, for earlier examples of the crisscrossing of slaves and deserters. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 18 August 1838 p114 c3. 211

Within these arguments was a conflict over the legitimacy and stability of the competing systems of constitutional monarchy and republicanism. Contemporaries judged these systems of government according to their belief in the proper forms of voluntary organizing. The patriot view was that monarchy, rather than deliberative, was maintained by violence and ignorance. That a young woman could bear ultimate responsibility for an empire was proof positive of this fact. The constitutionalist view was that it was the United States where absolutism rather than deliberation reigned, the

“sovereign mob” governed the public sphere. Beyond these arguments and rhetorical tropes, how did the press influence the boundaries and norms by which patriot organizing continued in exile?

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Chapter 5

“If the British war with them they will find some ‘clear grit:’” Voluntary Organizing, Secrecy, and Community in the Patriot Press

Chapter 2 explored the strong linkages among the press, rhetoric, and militarized organizing and how those relationships evolved in the lead-up to the Rebellion. This chapter asks how the patriot press, once in exile, related to militarized voluntary organizing after the Rebellion. How did the patriot press relate to patriot organizations and to initiatives to form patriot voluntary associations in the United States?

The patriot press remained crucial to patriot organizing in the U.S. in a number of ways. For example, it will become evident how editors of patriot newspapers, in addition to covering military organizing and patriot proclamations, corresponded with leaders of patriot military forces and assisted them in raising funds. A number of editors were also leaders in military organizing (as was the case with the British Rifle Corps and the Sons of Liberty examined in Chapter 2) and contemporaries noted a preponderance of editors and printers in the patriot rank-and-file. Members of the patriot press sought more broadly to organize the patriot movement in exile in a manner that furthered their goals of defining its boundaries and voluntary form. This included attempts by patriot editors to define and direct patriot voluntary organizing by speaking out against “ill planned” raids into the Canadas and making multiple calls for broad patriot organizations to coordinate and advocate for refugees. The analysis will then focus on another example of these efforts, namely the debate within the patriot press on using secret associations. This debate is all the more interesting given the roots of virtually all individuals associated

213

with the patriot press in liberal voluntary associations and the values those associations connoted. When the patriot press referred to secret patriot associations, it was in a way to build a sense of community in exile and to define who was and was not a patriot. As a final area of analysis, the chapter reviews how the patriot press focused on two important markers—national origin and gender—to further define the boundaries of the patriot community through its organizations.

Patriot Editors and Military Organizers

The patriot press in the United States not only carried news of military organizing and raids but interacted with and assisted those patriots leading them. The patriots of

Navy Island—after their evacuation from the island in January 1838—relied on the public for their sustenance on their winter trek around Lake Erie to Detroit, holding meetings to raise the necessary funds and public support for their continued mission. The patriot Budget of Conneaut Ohio, situated on the route between Buffalo and Detroit, closely followed this patriot movement westward.1 It provided updates on the patriots from other papers on or near the Lake Erie shore such as the Censor of Fredonia, New

York to the east.2 When the patriots arrived in Conneaut, the Budget reminded readers of their destitute state and how the patriots were obliged to rely “upon the hospitality and benevolent of a generous public.” In its next issue, the Budget included a notice titled

“Patriots!” reminding readers of a meeting that evening in their support. The subsequent two issues contained information on the meeting. The first after the gathering contained a

1 The Budget 23 January 1838, 25 January 1838 p1, 26 January 1838 p3, 27 January 1838 p3, 29 January 1838 p3 c1, 1 February 1838 p2 c2. 2 The Budget 25 January 1838 p1 c2. 214

very positive report, noting that attendance at the meeting was so large that “every part of that spacious edifice was filled to overflowing” and resulting in “a handsome and liberal collection” to aid the patriot forces. Also in this issue, the newspaper spoke highly of the speech given by patriot Donald M’Leod, who “no doubt” convinced the audience of the justness of supplying aid. In its following issue, the Budget published the formal proceedings of the gathering.3 The newspaper functioned to extend the reach of the meeting to its readers.

Similar adulatory press reports were filed further west along the lakeshore when the patriot group reached Painesville, Ohio. Some ten months before he would found the

Patriot’s Friend, Horace Steele, in his Painesville Republican, published an article—duly copied in the Budget—on two public meetings held in quick succession in Painesville.

The meetings were held to organize a committee of twelve to oversee the sustenance of the patriot force while in town. Steele was “happy to add that a spirit of benevolence seemed to prevail” and that “the tales of wo [sic] related by some grey headed veterans, who have fled from British vengeance - is enough to arouse the indignant feelings of every friend of liberty.” 4 The developing patriot press provided positive coverage to assist patriot refugees and filibusters in sustaining themselves and regrouping.

Patriot papers also provided a platform for patriot military organizers. Benjamin

Kingsbury Jr. of the Detroit Morning Post wrote to Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, who later became a patriot editor himself, to ask about patriot plans with respect to Upper

Canadian banks. Kingsbury addressed Sutherland by his patriot title, General Sutherland.

3 The Budget 27 January 1838 p3, 31 January 1838 p3 c2, 1 February 1838 p3 c2. 4 Painesville Republican quoted in The Budget 1 February 1838 p2 c2. 215

Returning from the recent occupation of Upper Canadian Bois Blanc Island, Sutherland wrote that he could not at that moment provide a full reply. However, he did forward copies of a number of patriot dispatches and proclamations from the occupation of the island, which Kingsbury duly printed.5

William Lyon Mackenzie provided a platform in his Gazette for patriot William

Johnston to justify the burning of the steamer Sir Robert Peel in late May 1838.

Launched the previous spring, the Peel was enroute from Brockville to Toronto. A group of patriots led by Johnston attacked the Peel while it was docked at Wellesley Island,

New York and after forcing the passengers off and unable to re-start its boilers, the patriots set it on fire.6 Mackenzie carried a notice from Johnston in which the latter argued that the act was not against the property or persons of the United States. Johnston was also at pains to claim that the attack had in fact taken place in British waters against

British subjects. In Johnston’s view, rather than committing a criminal act, he had instead acted under military authority as “commander in chief of the naval forces and flotilla” in

“the Patriot service of Upper Canada.”7

In addition to providing a forum for Johnston, Mackenzie himself came to the defence of his patriot colleague, outlining the wrongs that Johnston had suffered at the hands of the British and complaining of accusations by the Rochester Advertiser that

Johnston had committed a robbery on Amherst Island, Upper Canada. Mackenzie would publish two more letters from Johnston in which the latter described the burning the Peel

5 Morning Post copied in the Patriot 16 January 1838 p3 c1-3. 6 One of the most thorough descriptions of the event is John C. Carpenter, “Patriot Chronicles: The Destruction of the Sir Robert Peel and Its Aftermath” Thousand Island Life, April 13, 2013. Accessed 4 July 2017, http://www.thousandislandslife.com/BackIssues/Archive/tabid/393/articleType/ArticleView/ articleId/1199The-Burning-of-the-ldquoSir-Robert-Peelrdquohellip.aspx . 7 Mackenzie’s Gazette 16 June 1838 p45 c4. 216

as an act of “retributive justice,” denying any charges of piracy. In the same period,

Mackenzie published three items that were sympathetic to Johnston. The first was an article by Mackenzie disparaging the owners of the Peel, especially Brockville’s Jonas

Jones, judge and member of the Family Compact. The second was a letter to Mackenzie from a resident of Ogdensburg, New York accusing the Orangemen of Brockville of encouraging some in the United States to rob the Peel by alleging that the boat contained a large shipment of government specie. The third was a biographical article on

“commodore Johnston” that emphasized his loyalty to the United States and his respectability, reiterating that he did not attack the Peel as a “robber” or a “buccaneer.”8

In such ways, patriot papers defended and assisted patriot filibusters and helped propagate declarations and notices by them justifying their actions.

Many patriots who organized militarily and were involved with the press wrote to non-patriot American papers as well. They typically sought to justify their personal conduct or there was a specific reason for collaborating with the non-patriot paper.

Rensselaer Van Rensselaer, who led patriot forces on Navy Island, wrote to the Albany

Argus to explain his involvement with the patriots after the end of his active participation

8 Mackenzie’s Gazette 16 June 1838 p45 c4, 15 September 1838 p146 c4, 30 June 1838 p57 c2-3, 14 July 1838 p78 c2, and 3 November 1838 p203. The third article outlined how William Johnston fought for the U.S. in the War of 1812, losing his livelihood in Upper Canada as a consequence. According to the article, when Johnston became poor, people started calling him Bill. (The story reflected similar patriot arguments in Chapter 4). The implication of the article was that Johnston was poor because of his loyalty to the U.S., not because of his character and therefore fought against the characterization as “Pirate Bill” the robber. Unfortunately for Johnston, a historiography and mythology of him subsequently developed in which his “pirate” persona was emphasized leading even to the creation of “’s Pirate Days” as an annual festival in Alexandria Bay, New York. See Shaun J. McLaughlin, The Patriot War Along the New York- Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012), Chapter 10 section “The Fox bites the Hound”; Donald E. Graves, , Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill (Prescott: Friends of Windmill Point, 2001), 55-57; and Patrick Lacroix, “Choosing Peace and Order: National Security and Sovereignty in a North American Borderland, 1837–42,” International History Review 38, no. 5 (2016): 949 for the current characterization of Johnston as a pirate. For the festival “Bill Johnston’s Pirate Days,” Alexandria Bay Chamber of Commerce, Accessed July 31, 2017. www.visitalexbay.org/events/bill- johnstons-pirate-days/. 217

in military expeditions. That Van Rensselaer was the proprietor of the Argus probably explains his choice of the venue.9 Henry O’Reilly wrote to the New York American in response to being accused in that paper of being one of the main military organizers of the patriots and a partisan postmaster. William Lyon Mackenzie wrote the first narrative of the Rebellion in the Home District, which was published in the Jeffersonian of

Watertown, New York. Mackenzie attempted to have the Democratic Review print his narrative. However, O’Reilly informed Mackenzie that the periodical would not publish it as it was too negative about John Rolph.10

A number of refugees and sympathizers who turned to organizing patriot military expeditions were already editors or would go on to found patriot papers. Six of those who would join the patriot press had earlier organized patriot military expeditions. One did the reverse. While the editor of the Lewiston Telegraph, Samuel Hart led a failed raid on

Cobourg in July of 1839.11 As is well-known, Mackenzie had been one of the leaders on

Navy Island and Sutherland and Theller had been involved in patriot military expeditions in the winter of 1837-38.12 James Mackenzie also took part in patriot military organizing before turning to the patriot press, serving as a general in the trek along the Lake Erie

9 Historic Cherry Hill, Solomon and Arriet Van Rensselaer Papers, Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers (RVRP), Folder 3.8.2, “Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers - Prose + Poetry,” “My Own Notes,” 18-19; RVRP, Folder 3.8.2, “Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers - Prose + Poetry,” [Draft letter to Albany Daily Advertiser] “Narrative of facts connected with the frontier movement of the Patriot Army of Upper Canada;” RVRP, Folder 3.8.2, “Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers - Prose + Poetry,” “My Own Notes,” 1, 18 [21 Feb 1838 entry]. 10 PHOR, Box 16, Folder 1278-1286, Henry O’Reilly to William Cullen Bryant, 22 August 1839; PHOR, Box 4, O’Reilly’s response to a letter from the New York American, 4 December 1838; PHOR, Box 4, O’Reilly to Mackenzie, [undated]. 11 Mary Beacock Fryer, Volunteers and Recoats, Rebels and Raiders (Toronto: Dundurn Press for the Canadian War Museum and Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1987), 121-123. Edwin C. Guillet, “The Cobourg Conspiracy,” Canadian Historical Review 18 no. 1 (1937): 28–47. 12 Lillian F. Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB; Colin Frederick Read, “Edward Alexander Theller,” DCB. 218

coast, fighting at Fighting and Pelee Islands in February and March 1838 respectively, and helping to organize what became the Short Hills expedition into the Niagara peninsula in June 1838.13 Cyrille-Hector-Octave Côté, who had a close association with the North American of Swanton, Vermont helped lead two invasions, one in February

1838 to Caldwell’s Manor and the other in November to Napierville and Oddeltown as part of the second wave of the Rebellion in Lower Canada.14

Henry O’Reilly, who had a close association with the newspaper business of

William Lyon Mackenzie in exile, founded, with Hestor L. Stevens and other patriot sympathizers in Rochester, the less-known Committee of 10, one of the earlier associations established to assist the Rebellion. It began as a committee appointed by the

“Monroe County Convention” to “receive and forward contributions for relieving the suffering Patriots in Canada.” The committee met for the first time on December 28,

1837, even before the burning of the Caroline whipped up intense Anglophobia along the frontier. Their rough pencil notes demonstrate a group of individuals grappling with the limits of acceptable organizing. Would the society consent to violence and secrecy? The executive appointed a committee of three for each of the five wards in the city. They also created various committees comprised of one to three members to raise and organize donations. There were to be committees responsible for clothing, provisions, correspondence, transportation, and the distribution of the circular asking towns in

Monroe County to conduct meetings and forward supplies. There was also to be a committee for “arms and ammunition.” Two of its members, O’Reilly and E. B. Smith,

13 Raible, “Strive On!,” 89. 14 Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes: The Rebellions in Lower Canada 1837-38 (Stittsville, ON: Canada’s Wings, 1985), 164–174. 219

also had roles in the committees charged with correspondence and distributing the notice.

Provisions and ammunition would be accepted at the same places.15 Amassing materiel for war was thus not a side project, but was as integral to the organization as the more traditional aspect of a corresponding committee.

On January 2, 1838, the executive of the Committee of 10 sent a delegation “to proceed to the frontier, and state the views prevalent in Rochester and vicinity respecting the cause of liberty in Canada.” In a later notation, O’Reilly related how he visited Navy

Island on the boat of General Van Rensselaer—while the British were bombarding the island—to see for himself the propriety of furnishing further aid.16 Military organizing through voluntary channels continued among patriot editors in exile.

Another patriot organizer, Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, who would go on to found the Sublime Patriot, took an active part in organizing the expedition to Navy

Island. General Van Rensselaer dispatched Sutherland from the Niagara region to the

Detroit frontier to raise a force and create a diversion. On his way through Cleveland,

Sutherland spoke at a “Canada Meeting” on January 1, 1838. The meeting passed resolutions expressing its “strong sympathy with the interest of liberty in every country” and organizing a committee to accept donations for the patriot cause. That same day, in his capacity as Brigadier-General of the Patriot army, Sutherland issued a proclamation offering 300 acres in the Canadas and a hundred dollars in silver to recruits who joined

15 PHOR, Box 4, “Committee of 10” Meeting minutes. When compiling his papers around 1854, O’Reilly wrote a note in front of his collection of letters from the leaders of the Rebellion. Speaking of himself in the third person, O’Reilly claimed to be the one “who wrote the first public appeal for aid in behalf of Canadian Independence. &c.” PHOR, Box 4, “1838. Rebellion in Canada.” 16 PHOR, Box 4, [Printed Circular] “The Cause of Freedom,” “1838. Rebellion in Canada: Navy Island affairs &c.,” “Canadian “Rebellion” 1838 Navy Island” [signed pass from Committee of 10 to those sent to investigate]. 220

before May 1, 1838.17 Signups from Sutherland’s proclamation were recruited under the guise of an “emigrating committee” presumably to ‘emigrate’ to—or filibuster—the

Canadas.

Although not part of the patriot press in the United States, other examples of editors of papers based in the Canadas involved in military organizing exist. Robert-

Shore-Milnes Bouchette of the patriot Libéral/Liberal helped lead the attack by refugee patriots on Moore’s Corner in Lower Canada on December 6, 1837, where he was wounded and captured.18 Donald M’Leod, who had been the editor of the Grenville

Gazette in Prescott, Upper Canada, became a leading figure in the patriot movement in the United States. Although M’Leod never founded a patriot paper, he did publish a history of the Rebellion and his involvement.19 Rensselaer Van Rensselaer was not only the proprietor of the Albany Daily Argus as previously noted, but was actually near

Buffalo looking for subscribers when he heard about the Rebellion, rushing to Lewiston to see events first-hand.20

Not only were editors and printers well represented in the filibustering leadership, they were also found in the patriot rank and file. While the Navy Island force was passing through Conneaut, Ohio, the patriot Budget happily noticed that among the travelers “the

17 Oscar Kinchen, The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters: Liberation of Canadian Provinces from British Thraldom (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), 17-18 and Gates, “Sutherland,” DCB. See also Carl Wittke, “Ohioans and the Canadian-American Crisis of 1837-38” Archaeological and Hist. Quarterly, 58 (1949): 26–37. 18 Yves Tessier, “Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette,” DCB. 19 Lillian Francis Gates, “Donald M’Leod,” DCB. Donald M’Leod, A Brief Review of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the U. E. Loyalists and Scotch Highlanders in 1783; and of the grievances which Compelled the Canadas to have Recourse to Arms in Defence of their Rights and Liberties in the Years 1837 and 1838: Together with a Brief Sketch of the Campaigns of 1812, ’13, ’14: With an Account of the Military Executions, Burnings, and Sacking of Towns and Villages by the British, in the Upper and Lower Provinces, during the Commotion of 1837 and ’38 (Cleveland: F. B. Penniman, 1841). 20 RVRP, Folder 3.8.2, “Rensselaer Van Rensselaer Papers - Prose + Poetry,” “My own Notes,” 1–2. 221

printing fraternity, ever the ardent friends of Liberty, and ever on the ground when her cause needs defenders, are numerously and respectably represented, several of the Patriot officers and privates being brothers of the craft.”21 In a subsequent issue, the Budget remarked that others noticed this fact as well: “we see from accounts that the Printers from all sections of the country are joining the Patriots. If the British war with them they will find some ‘clear grit.’”22

Editors who actively opposed the patriot movement also noted the large contingent of the fourth estate within the ranks of patriot military forces. Henry Grant cautioned readers of his Western Herald of Sandwich, Upper Canada that if he did not receive payments from subscribers in a timely manner he would be forced to join

“Sutherland’s patriotic pack of printers” and invade Canada for the promised 300 acre farm.23 One of the patriot casualties of the Battle of Windsor, according to Grant, was “a

Printer of Detroit, whose name we could not ascertain, bearing a tricolored flag, [who] fell in the rear of his absconding companions.”24 Historian Oscar Kinchen notes another newspaperman joined the patriot secret society the Hunters’ Lodges.25

As it had before the Rebellion, the patriot press in exile remained instrumental to militarized voluntary organizing. The developing patriot press called on readers to assist patriot filibusters, provided positive coverage of patriots and their activities, and gave space for patriot filibusters to propagate their views. Moreover, many of those involved

21 Budget 29 January 1838 p3 c1. 22 Budget 3 February 1838 p3 c1. 23 Western Herald 31 January 1838 p18 c3. 24 Western Herald 11 December 1838 p332 c2 25 Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 53. The person in question was Samuel Lane of Akron, Ohio. 222

in patriot military organizing were already members of the patriot press or would go on to establish newspapers that would form part of it.

The Patriot Press and its Relationship to Secret Patriot Organizing

The role of the press and editors in military organizing raises the question of how secrecy in the patriot movement evolved after the outbreak of the Rebellion. Members of the patriot press, in line with their voluntarist values, debated the propriety of such secret organizing. They also used references to secret patriot organizations to foster a sense of community.

While patriot organizing in exile had many centres, leaders, and iterations, much of the work was in relation to a secret society, the Frères Chasseurs (in English, the

“Hunters’ Lodges” or “Patriot Hunters”) organized by Robert Nelson, C-H-O Côté, and others. Concentrated south of Montreal and in that city, variations of the Chasseurs’ fraternal ritual spread to cover areas of patriot activity throughout the United States.

As other historians have shown, the Hunters’ Lodges had elaborate initiation rituals and degrees of membership loosely based on freemasonry.26 The latter were similar to military ranks, but as historian Allan Greer notes, with a distinct canadien cultural influence.27 One began as a “chasseur” (hunter/private); platoons were led by a

“raquette” (snowshoe/corporal), who in turn were led by two “castors”

(beavers/captains). If numbers warranted, a superior rank of “aigle” (eagle/colonel) was

26 Boissery, Beverley Boissery, A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treasons, Trials and Transportation To New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels After the 1838 Rebellion (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and Dundurn Press, 1995), 32. 27 Greer, Patriots and the People, 341. 223

created.28 As for ritual, the Hunters took an oath promising secrecy and assistance to fellow Hunters. A generic version of the oath in Lower Canada stated that

I, A. B., freely and in the presence of Almighty God, solemnly swear to observe the secret signs and mysteries of the said society of Chasseurs never to write, describe, nor make known, in any way, any things which have been revealed to me ... to be obedient ... providing I can do so without great prejudice to my person; to aid with my advice, care and property, every brother Chasseur in need, and to notify him in time, of misfortune that may threaten him. All this I promise without Reservation and consenting to see my property destroyed, and to have my throat cut to the bone.29

Once the oath was taken, the member, who had been blindfolded, “was asked what he wanted to see. The reply was ‘light’.”30 The blindfold was then removed with the new member now seeing himself surrounded by pistols and rifles with a dagger at his throat, informed of this fate if he revealed the society.31 The Hunters were successful in establishing a secret headquarters in Montreal and initiating a large number of adherents into their network, especially in the Beauharnois and Châteauguay regions.32

According to a later confession of Dr. Henri Brien to Lower Canadian authorities,

Donald M’Leod was inducted into the Hunters’ Lodges when he visited Nelson in the early summer of 1838.33 According to Brien, M’Leod made a pledge to Nelson and his

28 Boissery, Deep Sense of Wrong, 33. 29 Ibid. 30 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 155. 31 Boissery, Deep Sense of Wrong, 33; Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 155 32 Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, 154-156. Greer, Patriots and the People, 341-344. Boissery, Deep Sense of Wrong, 32-34. 33 Report of the State Trials, Volume 2 (Montreal: Amour and Ramsay: 1839), 550. The confession was also in the North American. As will be seen later, the North American refuted part of Brien’s confession. The role of M’Leod in spreading Chasseur rituals was not refuted by the North American, lending credence to its origin with the Frères. See North American 4 December 1839 p1 c5. 224

compatriots “that on his return among his brethren, he would cause this [secret organization] to be adopted in preference to all others.”34 Although not mentioned in his memoirs, M’Leod then established himself in Cleveland and, beginning in May or June

1838, Hunter ritual spread from Lower Canada rapidly throughout the borderland and possibly into Upper Canada.35 The Lodges that developed in the United States adopted similar degrees, oaths, and rituals to their Lower Canadian antecedents.

For the study of the patriot press, it is important to emphasize that the Hunters’

Lodges movement in the U.S. consisted of the spread and modification of Hunter ritual from Lower Canada amongst the patriots and their supporters. To try to definitively count membership, or cast the Hunters as the sum of U.S. patriot organizing or as a tandem organization to the “Chasseurs” in Lower Canada is to make the Hunters’ Lodges of the

United States into something they were not.36 Hunter ritual spread expansively among

34 North American 4 December 1839 p1 c5. 35 On June 25, 1838, M’Leod has stood trial in Detroit for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act. Gates, “M’Leod,” DCB. As a consequence, M’Leod must have facilitated the spread of Chasseur rituals and structures before then. Corey points to May as a key month in this regard, Tiffany to June. From a contemporary perspective, Heustis states that when it came to the arrival of the Hunter ritual in Watertown New York, “sometime in the Month of May” a man from Cleveland arrived to establish a lodge “on the same plan as those previously established at Cleveland and other places.” Corey, Crisis of 1830–1842, 75; Orrin E. Tiffany, “Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38” Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society 8 (1905): 130; Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 36; Heustis, Narrative, 41. 36 The Hunters’ Lodges have suffered from the historiographical divide between Upper and Lower Canada and the United States. Certain work on the “Chasseurs” or the “Hunters” does not mention the existence of the movement beyond the area of study. Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes, Chapters 13 and 14; Corey, Crisis of 1830–1842, 75–76. This has created an artificial barrier between what was one diverse movement and that divide has been formalized in the literature. See for example Gian Mario Cazzangia, Frères chasseurs, Brother hunters: Une histoire méconnue de charbonnerie canadienne (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009), 9–16; Dunley, “A. D. Smith,” 64. Albert Corey proves a membership estimate of 40,000 to 50,000 but possibly up to 200,000 based on a narrative from a British officer. Kinchen provides an estimate of 40, 000 based on a report from the customs collector at Oswego. All subsequent work on the Hunters uses elements of these estimates. The issue for understanding the patriot movement in exile is that these broad contemporary guesses are rationalized to fit the concept of one centralized fraternal order. Case in point, Donald Graves singles out a lower estimate as more plausible due to initiates attending only one meeting. Rather, these estimates should stand as a clear indicator of the expansiveness of the patriot movement and the rapid spread and popularity of hunter ritual. T. R. Preston, Three Years’ Residence in Canada, from 1837 to 1839, with Notes of a Winter Voyage to New York, and Journey Thence to the British 225

patriots along the U.S. border and was consequently picked up as a marker of community by the patriot press. There were reports of various versions of the Hunter oath and degrees, all varying in different ways from the original ones of Lower Canada. This would all suggest modification at the local level rather than centralized control over ritual.37 The fact that the attack on Prescott in Upper Canada was conducted by lodges in a localized part of New York state suggests an independence from Cleveland.38 Finally, there are differing interpretations of the Hunter convention in Cleveland on September

16, 1838, which approved a provisional government and a banking scheme for raising funds, as a major gathering of all Hunters or only a regional meeting.39

Debate about the role of secrecy in the patriot community started neither in May

1838 with the establishment of the Hunters, nor after the failure of initial patriot raids.40

Possessions; to Which is Added, A Review of the Condition of the Canadian People, Volume 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1840), 157; Corey, Crisis of 1830–1842, 75; Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 37; Graves, Guns Across the River, 50, 53; Dunley, A. D. Smith,” 68; McLaughlin, Michigan, 84. 37 Kinchen discusses this regional variation and how Hunter ritual, Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 36, 57. There are also different versions of the Hunter oath which survive. Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 55-56; Hunters' Lodge: persons about to be initiated as members are introduced . . . , [1838?]. In printed ephemera of the Toronto Metropolitan Library, CIHM Microfiche Series, 2B3; Corey, Crisis of 1830 –1842, 76; Lindsey, Life and Times, vol 2, 199; Cazzaniga, Frères chasseurs, 17–20. 38 According to Heustis, in late August 1838, “leaders or officers” meeting in Watertown formulated a plan to invade Upper Canada in November via Cleveland. They instead decided to attack Prescott. For his part, M’Leod in his brief review noted that a “group in Salina” (near Syracuse in Onondaga County) initiated the plan to attack Prescott. On November 12, a force of men recruited almost exclusively from Jefferson and Onondaga Counties (specifically the town of Salina) has seized a windmill downstream from Prescott. Importantly, the force has unfurled a flag with the words “Liberated by the Onondaga Hunters” and not a banner for “the Hunters.” Heustis, Narrative, 42; M’Leod, Brief Review, 244. 39 While Cleveland was certainly a major node of Patriot organizing, its role as formal headquarters for the entirety of the Patriots may have been limited. Both M’Leod and Mackenzie referred to the Hunters in Cleveland with a regional designation, “Cleveland committee” or “Cleveland association.” Gates, “M’Leod,” DCB; Mackenzie’s Gazette 4 May 1839 p1 c1. Lindsey, Live and Times, Vol. 2, 199 describes it as a regional convention of the Hunters’ Lodges of Ohio and Michigan. The regional nature has been lost in subsequent works, witness the evolution in coverage from Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 38 to Graves, Guns Across the River, 58 and Dunley,”A. D. Smith,” 69 to Shaun McLaughlin, The Patriot War Along the Michigan-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels (Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia, 2013), 85. 40 Corey, Kinchen, and Graves all place the turn to secrecy as occurring later, in the spring-summer of 1838 after the failure of the first series of raids across the border from December 1837 to February 1838. Albert B. Corey, The Crisis of 1830-1842 in Canadian-American Relations 1830–1842 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 70-71; Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 26-27; Graves, Guns Across the River, 51-52. 226

As is evident from the Committee of 10 in Rochester and the Emigrating Committee at

Cleveland, secret organizing was a patriot tactic from the start of exile. In fact, historian

Julien Mauduit has noted the early origins—the end of December 1837—of the secret organizing that became the Chasseurs.41 Given the need to organize clandestinely to avoid exposure to British and American authorities, the use of secrecy is not surprising.

Nonetheless, secrecy proved troubling for various members of the patriot press in exile as at odds with their understandings of liberal voluntary associations. As a case in point,

Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, now in exile in Vermont and who worked with Mackenzie on his Gazette, grappled with the moral and strategic implications of a secret organization. Writing to fellow Lower Canadian exile Louis Perrault, O’Callaghan admitted “I have been invited to join these Lodges – to be ‘initiated.’ I have declined, for

I do not consider the means adequate to the end – if I am opposed, on principle, to such mode of proceeding altogether. They have been the ruin of Ireland, although the consequences there, as in every Country, of despotism. They put men of the purest morals and of the highest principle, whose honesty cannot be doubted, into the power of base spies who join these societies to betray those who belong to them, and take oaths for the purpose of breaking them.” O’Callaghan was referring to the many secret societies both for and against British rule, which had resulted in violent conflict and the continued presence of large numbers of British troops.42 Henry O’Reilly similarly questioned the propriety of secrecy. He wrote of his involvement in the Committee of 10 that “When I

41 Julien Mauduit, “Vrais républicains d’Amérique: les patriotes canadiens en exile aux États-Unis (1837- 1842),” (PhD Dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016), 153–155. 42 Wisconsin Historical Society, Louis Perrault Papers (LPP), Letters December 4 1838 - April 27 1839, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan to Louis Perrault, 22 January 1839. The ruin of Ireland could refer to the Apprentice Boys of Derry, the Orange Lodge, Defenders, and other sectarian orders. These concerns with spires were borne out in the case of the Hunters. 227

was invited to cooperate with parties friendly to Canadian Independence, – in secret meetings – I said that if the object was, as I believed it to be a good one, we should do openly whatever we did to promote its success. For myself, I said, I would ask openly, or not at all.”43 Secrecy was born of despotism, not independent men joining together to advance the cause of liberty.

William Lyon Mackenzie echoed similar concerns in public. Writing in the

Gazette about the patriot Benjamin Lett, most known for reputedly bombing the monument to General Sir in 1840, Mackenzie mused on the nature of secrecy:

Like myself, Benjamin Lett, if I understood him right, has a hearty contempt for the system of oaths and Hunter’s Associations, founded upon violent imprecations and threats. I administered not one back of Toronto, nor previous to it. I picked my men in all I had to do, and with all I can learn of both ways I would prefer to do so again. The villain will not be bound by the strongest oath-the honest man requires it not. On Navy Island we had no swearing, and where was there ever to be found a situation of more danger from enemies without and traitors within? From many circumstances I judge that plunder has been obtained by the unworthy through the machinery of sworn associations, and hence I dislike them the more.44

Mackenzie had called for men to form broad-based political associations in the past.45

However, as with O’Callaghan, Mackenzie had been influenced by past exposure to secret societies. Mackenzie was perhaps reflecting here an understanding of the Family

Compact whereby, through the Orange Lodge, those in Upper Canadian circles of power

43 PHOR, Box 4, “1838: Time’s Changes” [later note on “attempted uprising in Canada, Aid from Western New York”]. Emphasis in the original. 44 Mackenzie’s Gazette 7 November 1840 p2 c1. 45 McNairn, Capacity to Judge, 97. 228

obtained wealth and . For his part, Chris Raible traces Mackenzie’s aversion to secrecy to his interactions with Freemasonry around the Morgan affair, a major scandal where Freemasons were accused of a murder and cover up in upstate New York.

According to Raible, Mackenzie learned that “privileged information, private arrangements, clandestine agreements, secret pledges, [and] covert compacts are incompatible with democracy and public service.”46

These members of the patriot press questioned the propriety of secret organizing.

They drew on understandings of liberal voluntary organizing among independent and masculine men to critique such secrecy. They viewed oath-bound associations as problematic, binding men of ‘good character’ with oaths to spies and oath-breakers, two examples of less manly men. From the violence of the rebellion emerged a discussion about the place of secrecy and binding oaths in voluntary associations.

Nonetheless, secrecy was also frequently harnessed as a tool by both the patriot and constitutionalist press: divulging secret plans of opponents, countering falsehoods advanced by turncoats or opponents, taunting enemies and communicating misleading information about military organizing to them, outing covert spies and conspirators, and printing selected songs and words with hidden meanings and significance for supporters.

In a deposition to Upper Canadian authorities, George U. Tihe revealed how knowledge of secret Hunter ritual travelled amongst the community of readers of the patriot press. In

Lockport, Tihe had been reading the Freeman’s Advocate which led him to be solicited if

46 Chris Raible, “‘The Threat of being Morganized will not deter us’: William Lyon Mackenzie, Freemasonry and the Morgan Affair” Ontario History 100, no. 1. (2008): 24. Mackenzie’s concerns were also personal as he had been blackballed from Masonic membership at York in 1827. See Raible, ibid., 3. 229

he was “willing to see the light?” When he replied in the affirmative, he was brought to a house and initiated into the first degree.47

In regards to secrecy, the patriot press used three tactics: it used a hidden meaning for the word “loafer,” transmitted redacted messages on patriot organizing, and sent coded messages—most likely fictitious—to patriots and those sympathetic to them. Such tactics placed secret patriot organizing in the public sphere, continued the conflict in print between constitutionalist and patriot papers, and helped to build community by projecting a sense of power and organizational reach.

The first example of this interplay between the patriot press and secret organizing concerns Sutherland’s “Emigrating Committee,” a group established in Cleveland to help raise men and materiel for the patriot cause.48 On January 5, 1838, the Cleveland Herald and Gazette published a notice from the committee to solicit “all the articles necessary for the objects of their emigration.” T. Ingraham was listed as chairman and F. W.

Lawton as secretary; Sutherland’s name was not to be found.49 The New York

Commercial Advertiser attacked this “mean, sneaking way of doing business,” adding

“no brave or honest man will attempt to screen himself from the consequences of acts which are in violation of our laws, by glossing them over with false names” and declaring

“let it be done openly and above board.”50 In this instance, the Commercial Advertiser expressed disproval of planning an invasion, but focused its attack on lying about the

47 Deposition of George U. Tihe, cited in Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, 53. 48 Corey, Crisis of 1830–1842, 39; Sutherland held a meeting in Cleveland on January 1 1838. 49 Quoted in Cobourg Star 31 January 1838 p1 c2. Lawton would continue in the patriot movement at Cleveland becoming the Secretary for the Provisional Government under A. D. Smith at the Cleveland convention. LVBP, Container 1, Folder 4 “Correspondence and notes,” Appointment as Commander in Chief of the Patriot Army of Upper Canada, 18 August 1838; Dunley, “A. D. Smith,” 93. 50 Commercial Advertiser, copied in the Cobourg Star 31 January 1838 p1 c2. 230

purpose in public by adopting the form of a more legitimate voluntary association for benevolent aid.

In other places along the border, when local patriots held similar secret gatherings, they received a similar response. An investigation by an informant for the

London Gazette in Michigan noted patriots drilled under false pretences in Detroit.

Recruits were sworn to secrecy, and “other sections of the country” had smaller contingents. The Niagara Reporter outlined secret organizing in Lockport, New York.

Arms arrived in barrels marked “oysters” for a planned expedition, supposedly led by

M’Leod and Charles Duncombe. The Reporter noted that “none who are not initiated, are permitted to attend the meetings or to participate in the secrets of the cabal.”51 Here the

Reporter was comparing recent patriot organizing to a criminal conspiracy. The Western

Herald of Sandwich, Upper Canada asked rhetorically of the people of Detroit “Do you covertly aid the ‘patriots’? Why do you do so? Come out like men, avow officially as you do virtually, your approval of the deeds of this banditti.”52 In this instance, clandestine patriot organizing was associated with criminal collusion rather than upstanding liberal voluntary associations precisely because it accepted secrecy. Ideas of open organizing were bound up with notions of the ‘manly’ duty to be forthright about one’s objectives.53

Although a secret organizations with its own cipher, the Hunters’ Lodges were openly discussed by the borderlands press. On the British North American side, the

Brockville Statesman, organ of the Orange Lodge in Upper Canada, enumerated the

51 London Gazette 26 May 1838 p2 c5. The story from the Niagara Reporter was also covered in the Western Herald 5 June 1838 p122 c2-3. 52 Western Herald, 22 May 1838 p109-110. 53 For the ideas of manliness and association that would have informed the constitutionalists see, Cecilia Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women: The Gendered Languages of Religion and Politics in Upper Canada, 1791-1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 86. 231

towns on the New York side of the St. Lawrence River where secret patriot meetings had taken place and also noted the location where a stand of arms had been discovered.54 In a similar vein, Thomas Dalton’s constitutionalist Patriot at Toronto had already obtained and published information on the Patriot Hunters only a few months after their founding.

For example, Dalton published an article about a meeting in Norwich, Upper Canada held on June 27. Containing a great deal of compromising information, the article explained that some individuals in Norwich had asked that a man journey from Lockport, New

York to establish a branch of the Hunters there. The Patriot reported that about fifty people had attended the meeting and that a “rising”—that never materialized perhaps because of the Patriot’s coverage—had been planned for July 4. On July 27, the Patriot published an article detailing the signs associated with the various degrees of membership in the Hunters.55

On yet another occasion, the Patriot again exposed the Hunters. The stated reason for this coverage was to foil the rumoured attack by the “lawless anarchists who line our frontier,” but the paper also tried to condemn all anti-government organizing. Through the Patriot, Dalton informed the plotters that “their most secret councils” had been revealed to authorities in both the U.S. and the Canadas. However, even by Dalton’s admission, it was not a collection of “lawless anarchists” but rather a society similar to the freemasons with a joint stock bank “whose capital is secured upon the entire property of every individual in Upper Canada.” Dalton stated that the Hunters would bring military despotism to Upper Canada, described the offices within the Hunter

54 Copied in the Western Herald 13 November 1838 p300 c1. 55 It is unclear why the Patriot waited exactly a month before publishing the proceedings of the Norwich meeting. There may have been delay in Dalton learning of the gathering, perhaps from the Upper Canadian government. Patriot 27 July 1838 p2 c2-3. 232

organization, and noted how most of these offices were held by residents of Ohio.

Without naming names, Dalton called out the participants in the Hunter convention in

Cleveland, intimating that they had been exposed.56 In another issue of the Patriot,

Dalton mocked the Hunters with derisive poetry, including the line “Ye Spotless lambs of

Hunter’s Lodges.” Instead of attacking the cloak of secrecy, this time Dalton was broadly hinting that its members were weak and naïve. In his Gazette, Mackenzie, in turn, responded to Dalton’s mockery. Makenzie deflated some of the poem’s power by acknowledging and copying it in his paper, referring to it as some “scraps of tolerable poetry.”57

The shared public of the patriot press and its constitutionalist adversaries took another turn in the case of Jean-Baptiste-Henri Brien. In a major breach of the Chasseurs’ secrecy, Brien turned Crown informant. Brien had been leading Chasseurs rising in

Beauharnois, but soon tried to flee to the United States before being captured. Although he wrote his long disclosure detailing Chasseur activity in November 1838, its details did not emerge in the press until the late fall of 1839. The patriot North American of

Swanton, Vermont claimed that it had received a manuscript copy of Brien’s statement in

July. It was only when Brien’s confession came into the hands of a patriot that the

Montreal Herald printed the confession with a number of errors and omissions.58 Stating that it had waited for other newspapers “especially the Tory papers of Canada” to print it first, the North American serialized the confession over three issues between December 4

56 Patriot 30 October 1838 p2 c1-2. 57 Dalton’s reference to a “spotless lamb” had Biblical connotations equating Hunters to lambs being readied for sacrificial slaughter (1 Peter 1:18-19). Mackenzie’s Gazette August 30 1839 p418 c1. 58 North American 18 December 1839 p1 c2. 233

and 18, 1839.59 The North American, the Patriote Canadien, and Mackenzie’s Gazette all noted the many mistakes or untruths it contained.60 The Patriote Canadien then published declarations by some of those named by Brien in which they denied what Brien had said about them.61

The patriot press also turned a common epithet that constitutionalist papers aimed at them to use it as a marker of community: “loafer.” In his Patriot, Dalton complained of the descriptions by “The Radical and Loafer presses” of the treatment of state prisoners in the Canadas.62 The epithet was common enough that Americans used it too. Patriot editor Thomas Low Nichols complained that “a certain class of our fellow citizens chose to stigmatise [the patriots of Navy Island] as loafers and vagabonds.”63

Yet, the references to loafers and lazy clubs could also bind the patriots in exile around a shared marker of community. The patriot press could address itself directly to

“loafers” as a marker of shared membership. The Lewiston Telegraph carried a notice

“Look out ye loafers who are selling liquor sauce without a licence. There is a small fine for such wickedness” and the Mercury and Buffalonian contained the simple statement emphasized with a manicule on each side “‘LOAFERS !’”64 The use of quotation marks around loafer by the Mercury and Buffalonian suggests an understood second meaning of

59 North American 4 December 1839 p1 c1- p134 c1; 11 December 1839 p1; 18 December 1839 p1 c1. 60 Patriote Canadien 23 October 1839 p3 c3, North American 4 December p1 c1, Mackenzie’s Gazette 9 November 1839 p1 c3, See also the North American 18 December 1839 p1 c1-5. 61 Patriote Canadien16 October 1839 p3 c2 and 13 Nov 1839 p2 c5. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 June 1838 p63 c2; Brockville Statesman quoted in the Western Herald 13 November 1838 p300 c1. 62 Patriot 25 September 1838 p2 c4. See also Western Herald 23 January 1838 p11 c3. See also the Chronicle and Gazette, which carried an update contradicting an earlier report “that loafers at Rochester” tried to burn the Upper Canadian ship Gore while it was in port. Chronicle and Gazette 28 November 1840 p3 c4. 63 Buffalo History Museum, Thomas L. Nichols, Address Delivered at Niagara Falls, on the Evening of the Twenty-ninth of December, 1838. The anniversary of the Burning of the Caroline (Buffalo: Charles Faxon, 1839), 9. 64 Lewiston Telegraph 31 May 1839 p2 c6. Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p3 c2. 234

the term only appreciated by patriots. Patriot readers would understand these references to loafers and their clubs as references to patriots and patriot organizing, thus forming a distinct language and understanding. Theller even published humorous notices of two associations—the “Loafers’ Club” of Detroit and the “Lazy Club” in Buffalo—showing a self-reflexive understanding of the liberal voluntary tradition which the patriots otherwise took very seriously.65 As Darren Ferry has said of the satirical press coverage of the

Peterborough “Lime Juice Club,” such mentions were designed to “ridicule the sacred philosophies of voluntary associations.” In Ferry’s view, these fictional vice-filled clubs demonstrated a “fascination and enthusiasm for voluntary associations.”66

The selective use of redaction by patriot papers—in their reports on secret patriot organizing—was another way the press’s engagement with secret societies helped to foster a sense of community amongst their readers. James Mackenzie’s Freeman’s

Advocate contained two articles in the same issue referencing the “C–—.” Possibly

“committee” or “chasseurs,” the first article reported that “The C–— met and have taken measures” to achieve “more efficient action and greater results” than previously. The second article reported that “J. Ward Birge submitted his conduct of the C–— who exhonerated[sic] him […] after a rigid investigation.” Birge was supposed to have led the

Hunter expeditionary force in its attack on Prescott but never reached Upper Canada. In the aftermath, Birge had been subjected to withering criticism and accusations of

65 Spirit of ’76 August 17, 1839, 27 August 1839. 66 Darren Ferry, Uniting in Measures of Common Good: The Construction of Liberal Identities in Central Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press), 2008. 3-4. For a later example of such a club in the United States see an article in the Kansas News 25 July 1857. Quoted in Linda S. Johnston, ed. Hope Amid Hardship: Pioneer Voices from Kansas Territory (Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 2013), 85. 235

cowardice.67 In the wake of the failures of the Battle of the Windmill and the Battle of

Windsor, James Mackenzie used these articles to reveal how patriots were organizing and learning from their mistakes. However, he could have conveyed this information without his cryptic references to the “C–—.,” suggesting that James Mackenzie could have been conveying the illusion that all patriots where united by an insider knowledge.

In exile in the U.S., Samuel Hart published an article where he offered “A

PROPHESY [sic],—We shall resume the publication of the “Plain Speaker” in Belleville

U.C., on the ————.” As for William Lyon Mackenzie, one of the resolutions of the

Canadian Association he helped organize was redacted in its entirety.68 Here a patriot newspaper purported to withhold certain information to hint at other plans or large-scale organizing. In this way, patriot readers could feel that they were part of a vaster organized enterprise. Mackenzie’s references to the Hunters’ Lodges served a similar purpose. Just before the planned Hunter attack on Prescott, Mackenzie published the song “The Hunters of Kentucky” without explanation and again after the patriots had been defeated.69 Later, Mackenzie reprinted the Celebration of St. Patrick’s Day by the

Sons of Erin which included toasts to “sympathyzers” [sic] accompanied by the air

“Hunters of Kentucky.” 70 A melody about the Battle of New Orleans, “The Hunters of

Kentucky” was a popular song sung by supporters of , which became associated with the Hunters’ Lodges, another way in which patriots attempted to associate their cause with American resistance to Britain.71

67 Graves, Guns Across the River, 92, 133; Mackenzie’s Gazette 22 December 1838 p1 c2. 68 Lewiston Telegraph 26 April 1839 p2 c6; Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 March 1839 p320 c1. 69 Mackenzie’s Gazette 18 Nov1838 Extra p2, 24 November 1838 p227 c2. 70 Mackenzie’s Gazette 23 March 1839. 71 Graves, Guns Across the River, 243. 236

Patriot newspapers also made references to spies to bind together the patriot community as well as demonstrate its reach. The North American published an exposé of a spy, Major Richardson, who took on the guise of a lumber merchant from Michigan to lure a Colonel Gagnon into Lower Canada. The article mentioned that “the unhanged villain” was now on a tour along the Michigan frontier and included a physical description of Richardson. Theller copied the article and gave it the title “Hunters – Look out!” 72 On other occasions, Theller warned “Friends of Canadian liberty beware,–there are spies among you.”73 These evocations of “friends” surrounded by spies fostered a sense of solidarity and common cause.

The use of coded messages proved one of the most powerful ways to place readers within a supposedly extensive network of shared aspirations. For instance,

Theller exposed—in an almost gleeful tone—a possible constitutionalist kidnapping plot.

In an article in his Spirit of ’76, Theller offered advice to “some of the Tory residents of

Windsor and Sandwich. We would in good faith and honesty, advise them, if they will persist in having any idea that they can abduct, or kidnap, any person from this side of the river, that they will be more liberal in their offers, and they will employ a more decent person than their last. The poor wretch got drunk, and told his plans. It won’t do.”

Theller then called out a “certain English grocer” on Detroit’s Woodward Avenue for his treatment of a fellow patriot, ominously stating:

It is cold weather for riding now, and tar sticks. While we are on the subject, we would caution another resident of

72 Spirit of ‘76 18 September 1839; North American 4 September 1839p86 c4. The North American may have been referring to patriote Colonel Julien Gagnon, who accompanied C.-H.-O. Côté at the Battle of Lacolle. Richard Chabot, “Lucien (Julien) Gagnon,” DCB. 73 Spirit of ‘76 1 October 1839. 237

this city from attempting to carry into execution the plans, which with three others of Malden, he concocted, on Monday night last, between nine and ten o’clock, in the back room of Bullock’s Tavern there. The wretched fool— does he not know what he said? If he doubts it, let him come and see us, and we will tell him, word for word, the whole dialogue. It is strange that men will be so foolish as to put themselves in the power of those whom they wish to destroy. Twice now, has that customer been caught tripping, beware, we tell him, of a third time –HUNTERS 74 3. Z S T !—A. U. L ! ! !—N. X. R. ½ S2 ! ! W. 9 U. M ! !

Theller’s article harnessed secret code to at once foil constitutionalist plots, show the organizational reach of the patriots, and issue major threats. Rather than patriots being sufferers, in this case they were the ones in a powerful position with surreptitious control over the constitutionalist plotters. The use of Hunter “code” magnified this effect.

The Bald Eagle of Samuel Underhill included in its issues of December 21 and

28, 1838 and January 1, 1839 a short one-line statement written in code.75 Thomas Low

Nichols, in the Mercury and the Mercury and Buffalonian, also included short coded statements as seen in Table 3.76

Table 3: Patriot editors and Duncombe and examples of their respective “codes” Patriot Code Example

Theller 3. Z S T !—A. U. L ! ! !—N. X. R. ½ S2 ! ! W. 9 U. M ! ! (Detroit) Nichols 2?—|t7?,—vj 8:u t;i—u7v;—t;4f. (Buffalo) Underhill Wo,uv;tuŒ?hHn?fi;u—,t;Ot;s!;uv;fv?Æ,cv ,uU?!tæœ,i;pvu[-] (Cleveland) Duncombe (Cleveland)

74 Spirit of ‘76 28 November 1839. 75 Bald Eagle 21 December 1838 p3 c2, 28 December 1838 p4 c2, 1 January 1839 p3 c1. 76 Semi-Weekly Mercury and Buffalonian 5 March 1839 p2 c4. See also for example Daily Mercury 29 November 1838 p2 c1; 1 December 1838 p4 c3. 238

Could all of these instances of coded messages in Table 3 be actual covert communications amongst members of an expansive secret organization? Based on the codes, this appears doubtful. There was indeed a patriot code, developed by Charles

Duncombe, seen here, which used symbols, not letters or numbers. The example of

Duncombe’s code in Table 3 is in fact the alphabet: he developed a symbol for each letter of the alphabet except for c and j. As seen in the table, Duncombe’s code bears no resemblance to the ones used by Theller, Nichols, or Underhill.77 Even if the codes of the three editors were simply rhetorical devices—gibberish—they still would have had a suitably chilling effect implying an ominous secret network and reassuring patriot readers that their papers were part of it.

Drawing on liberal understanding of voluntary associations and the public sphere, a number of newspapers, patriot organizers, and exiles questioned the propriety of secrecy. Secrecy opened organizations to comparisons with criminal conspiracies.

Nonetheless, secrecy did not separate one from the public sphere. Indeed, information on secret patriot organizing was available in both constitutionalist and patriot newspapers.

Revelations of secret organizing could also be a rhetorical tool in public discussion.

Secrecy served as a tool for patriots and constitutionalists to demonstrate their knowledge of each other’s secrets and to cast their organization as more powerful and far-reaching.

77 For the use of this code by patriots see the commission of Bierce as “Kommandr and shief of the Patriot Army in Upper Kanada.” LVBP), Container 1, Folder 4 “Correspondence and notes,” Appointment as Commander in Chief of the Patriot Army of Upper Canada, 18 August 1838. For the letter from Charles Duncombe outlining the Hunter code and containing a coded version of the snowshoe degree see “Documents: The Hunters’ Lodges of 1838” New York History 19, no. 1 (1938): 68 and Kinchen, Patriot Hunters, picture obverse from page 49. Kinchen provides a translation of the snowshoe degree from said letter on page 55. 239

For patriots, it also served a bigger purpose of forming a community among refugees and sympathizers in the difficult circumstances of military defeat and exile.

The Patriot Press Works to Define Organizing

Beyond actual involvement with the Hunters and issues of secrecy, the patriot press also played an important directive role in respect to patriot organizing in exile.

First, members of the patriot press acted to direct and define patriot military organizing by speaking out against “ill planned” raids into the Canadas. Second, they made multiple calls for broad patriot organizations to coordinate and advocate for refugees.

On a number of occasions, William Lyon Mackenzie offered comments on military organizing by speaking up against “hasty and ill-planned” incursions into the

Canadas. Reporting one of his first interventions in this area, Mackenzie recounted in his

Gazette his encounter with a patriot named Brewer who had called on him with propositions “on matters that need not be named.” Mackenzie explained to his readers that he had wanted nothing to do with Mr. Brewer and how he had previously written “to the west and warned our friends to set their faces against any partial, ill-organized attempt at a rising.”78 In January 1839, when announcing his intention to move to

Rochester, Mackenzie gave as one of his reasons that he could better halt “partial and ill- planned movements.”79 When Mackenzie founded his Canadian Association in March of

1839, the second of its eight objectives was “to prevent as far as possible hasty and ill planned expeditions or attacks upon parts of the Canadas, designed or begun by, or in the

78 Mackenzie’s Gazette 8 September 1838 p144 c2. 79 Mackenzie’s Gazette 26 January 1839 p1 c1. 240

name of Canadian refugees or of persons in Canada.”80 Using his Spirit of ’76, Theller attempted to forestall patriot attempts to invade the Canadas. In November of 1839,

Theller announced that he had learned that there was “to be a great patriot movement here this fall.” Theller spoke against such a rising, insisting that it should only happen when those in the Canadas rose up first and emphasizing to readers that “all we say is

KEEP COOL until the time comes.”81 The press played a role in attempting to order a more coordinated military effort.

Reflecting their engagement with liberal voluntary associations, some members of the patriot press called on patriot organizations to work together and advocate on behalf of refugees from the Canadas. Through his Gazette, Mackenzie sought to direct patriot organizing in specific ways in order to assist refugees. In December 1838, Mackenzie repeated a call he had made in his Gazette in August for an association made up of the

“leading” refugees with branch societies modeled “somewhat after John Wesley’s example.”82 Mackenzie called for the convening of a patriot convention and asked that an association be formed to help defray the costs of those traveling to serve as witnesses at the trial of Upper Canadian Alexander McLeod, arrested in New York for taking part in the attack on the Caroline.83 Patriots editors were concerned with and suggested types of associations.

As noted in Chapter 3, the departure of Rebellion participants from the Canadas to the United States raised a major question: who would be part of the new patriot community in exile? As a consequence, a key question for any patriot organization was

80 Mackenzie’s Gazette 30 March 1839 p320 c1. 81 Spirit of ’76 7 November 1839. 82 Mackenzie’s Gazette 22 December 1838 p255 c1-4. 83 Volunteer 15 May 1841 p72, p75-76. 241

determining its membership; with the failure of support for the Rebellion in the two

Canadas and exile, who were now ‘the people’ these organizations should include and how? Some in the patriot press sought to promote membership requirements that centred on national allegiance. A second important focus was to seek to delineate the boundaries of female participation. These boundaries reflected a continued commitment to liberal voluntary organizing, but adapted to a new American context.

Two groups that formed in upper New York state in 1839 exemplified patriot organizations that defined membership in terms of national allegiance. The first, a

“Naturalized Citizens Convention,” was limited to naturalized citizens of the United

States; the second, a “Canadian Association” was restricted to Canadian exiles.

The “State Convention of Naturalized Citizens of New York” was an organization formed by former British subjects naturalized as U.S. citizens to address the question of perpetual allegiance to Great Britain.84 With the Rebellion, the issue re-emerged in the borderlands, with a specific flash point galvanizing those involved: after his capture on the Ann during the patriot occupation of Bois Blanc Island, Irish-born patriot Edward

Theller had been charged as a treasonous subject by the attorney general of Upper

Canada.85

84 Beginning with the Revolution, the question of national allegiance became a major issue around the War of 1812. See Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Penguin Random House 2011), Introduction. 85 Colin Read, “Edward Alexander Theller the ‘Supreme Vagabond’: ‘Honest, Courageous, and True’?” Ontario History, 84 (1992) 4. According to Colin Read, the Chief Justice of Upper Canada, Sir John Beverley Robinson, felt that with Theller’s sentence to death, the doctrine of perpetual allegiance “had been carried too far.” See also Read, “Theller,” DCB. Theller would escape from his imprisonment in the Quebec Citadel and return to the United States. Extradition was yet to be fully codified, as major strides in that direction were undertaken in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842. See Bradley Miller, Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border, 1819-1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Osgoode Society, 2016), 29, 34 and Bradley Miller, “The Law of Nations in the Borderlands: Sovereignty and Self-Defence in the Rebellion Period, 1837–1842,” in Blaine Baker and Donald Fyson, 242

The convention mirrored other liberal voluntary campaigns in four major respects.

First, the convening of the group followed regional meetings and the election of delegates. Based on a call from a central committee in Rochester, those interested held public meetings in Rochester, Watertown, and Syracuse to pass resolutions and elect delegates to the state convention.86 Underlying this process was a faith in the value of elections and a belief that in larger combinations lay a stronger voice in the public sphere.

Second, their objectives for the convention reflected liberal understandings of appropriate avenues for redress; the group sought “to use every fair means [. . .] to have this, our adopted country, enact a law protecting us.” These “fair means” consisted of a committee of five to draft a memorial to Congress and a campaign to circulate the memorial in every county of New York State for signatures. The ultimate goal was for Congress to “pass a positive law in reference to the claim of Great Britain to our perpetual allegiance, and also negotiate an international law on this subject with foreign powers.” Third, the

Naturalized Citizens Convention channeled a liberal language of modernism and improvement. It was not just that perpetual allegiance was wrong or impractical, but it was also archaic. Resolutions from their meetings decried “the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance”, declared Britain’s assertion a “barbarous claim”, and claimed “that retaliation, or the laws of physical force, which seems to be the only law protecting

Naturalized citizens bearing arms against their native country is inconsistent with the spirit of our enlightened times, a reproach to legislation, and a remnant of Feudalism.”87

Fourth, the society published its proceedings and declarations in the press. Both eds, Essays in the History of Canadian Law, vol. 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Osgoode Society, 2013), 235–77. 86 Spirit of ’76 8 October 1839; Mackenzie Gazette 14 September 1839 p425 c2. 87 Spirit of ’76 8 October 1839. 243

naturalized citizens as well as British exile editors were interested. Theller, for obvious reasons, and Mackenzie, who had yet to become naturalized, both followed closely the proceedings of the convention in their newspapers. Mackenzie was so keenly interested in the group and its objectives that he expressed much displeasure when ultimately no delegates from Rochester attended the first convention on September 9.88

Constitutionalists perceived the Naturalized Citizens Convention as yet another expression of patriot organizing. Commenting on a report by a Kingston newspaper on the convention, Theller said in a gleeful tone that, according to the paper, there were

“great preparations for another attack under the guise of a Naturalized Citizens

Convention and at which they say our notorious self is to be present and figure largely.”89

Here Theller may have been seeking to expand the patriot movement and show common cause with British-born naturalized U.S. citizens. Even if it was patriots—and Theller specifically—that bore the brunt of this issue, naturalized citizens should be patriots or at least fight for a common cause and support patriots on this initiative.

While Theller was reaching out to naturalized U.S. citizens over the issue of perpetual allegiance, Mackenzie was trying to limit the circle of who was a patriot or at least make a clear differentiation within the patriot movement between American patriots and those from the Canadas. Mackenzie sought to achieve this objective by organizing the Canadian Association, which was formed at a “Canadian Convention” of sixty exiles in Rochester. The stated purpose of the group was to work with “benevolent societies of

88 Mackenzie Gazette 14 September 1839 p425 c2. Mackenzie would obtain U.S. citizenship in 1843. Frederick H. Armstrong and Ronald J. Stagg, “William Lyon Mackenzie,” DCB. 89 Spirit of ‘76 29 October 1839. 244

Friends of Canadian Liberty, to aid the refugees who may be in difficulty.”90 The

Canadian Association also mirrored other liberal benevolent campaigns in three major respects. First, the group received contributions like any other benevolent associations. In his Gazette, Mackenzie acknowledged donors from as far away as Chicago and promised them further recognition.91 Second, the Canadian Association also engaged in meetings and voting as an internally democratic voluntary association. Third, the Association held to a belief in the public sphere: “A meeting of the council” passed a resolution to print six thousand extra copies of the proceedings of Mackenzie’s trial for violating American neutrality laws.92

While the Canadian Association was thus rooted in older voluntary traditions, its stance on organized violence was ambiguous. As one of the patriot editors concerned about oath-bound associations, Mackenzie may have been looking to differentiate

Canadian and American patriots but also to foment raids outside of a secret, oath-bound society. The group expressed a desire to prevent “hasty and ill planned” incursions into the Canadas and promised to respect neutrality. However, this stated goal raised questions: Did the group support methodical and well-planned invasions? Did the group’s respect for neutrality signal its express support of the American Neutrality Act or something more ambiguous? Further adding to a sense of opacity regarding the group’s agenda, the initial resolutions of the association were published in the press; however, the space for the seventh resolution was inexplicably and, perhaps ominously, left blank.93

The Canadian Association was short-lived, appearing to not have lasted beyond the time

90 Mackenzie’s Gazette 23 March 1839 p1 c4. 91 Ibid. 11 May 1839 p351 c1. 92 Ibid. 13 July 1839 p1 c3. 93 Ibid. 30 March 1839 p320 c1. 245

of Mackenzie’s conviction. In fact, Mackenzie had already turned his attention to the

“Society of Friends of Canada,” which also petered out by the time he was imprisoned.94

The creation of an organization, spearheaded by Mackenzie, dedicated to preventing cross-border forays and with explicit ‘Canadian’ exclusivity suggested a growing concern on his part with the direction and composition of the patriot movement.

Mackenzie was at pains to stress in his coverage in the Gazette that the gathering was

“exclusively Canadian.”95 Mackenzie, Theller, and others shared a growing unease that some American patriots seeking to liberate the Canadas were primarily motivated by self- aggrandizement rather than democratic principles—the spirit of speculation, not in the

Spirit of ’76. The Canadian Association may have also represented a focal point for refugees fearful of being swallowed up in a larger American movement.96 Emerging from this tension concerning national allegiance and authority was the relationship of patriot agitation to the broader context of U.S. filibustering. A move by certain exiles towards

Canadian exclusivity gestures towards worries of too much involvement by American citizens in leading the movement. These tensions reveal the place of local revolutionaries, who have been overshadowed in the focus by historians on the American filibusters who answered the call to aid the revolutionaries.97

As the patriot press worked to build a new community of patriots in exile, they turned to organizing to help expand or constrict who would be defined as a patriot.

Societies concerned with boundaries around national allegiance reflected specific liberal

94 Ibid. 11 January 1840 p493 c1-2. 95 Ibid. 23 March 1839 p1 c4. 96 Gates, After the Rebellion, 56-58. 97 See however, Tom Chaffin, ““Sons of Washington”: Narciso López, Filibustering, and U.S. Nationalism, 1848-1851,” Journal of the Early Republic 15, no. 1 (1995): 79-108. 246

voluntary campaigns that emerged in response to the violence initiated by the Rebellion.

With the Naturalized Citizens Convention, some patriots tried to expand their movement and make common cause with all naturalized American citizens. With the Canadian

Association, other patriots worked to differentiate membership within the movement based on national allegiance and limit the extent of American direction of the patriot movement in exile.

Gender was a second such border to police. The patriot press used the language of respectability to set the boundaries of female participation. The challenge of the patriot press was thus to determine those boundaries based on contemporary understandings of women’s participation in the public sphere in their association in the United States.

In patriot public writings, women were relegated to “traditional” roles as spectators or as “auxiliaries:” doing what was traditionally seen as “women’s work” such as food preparation and sewing. When patriot women did form patriot voluntary associations, they were portrayed in the patriot press as staying within appropriate female spheres. However, patriot women did evince a more activist “republican motherhood” role in public than had been the case in the Canadas, and this more proactive stance was supported as acceptable participation by the patriot press, if not by constitutionalist editors who remained in the Canadas.98 There were clear gendered divisions—social and spatial—in the patriot press as was the case in popular politics and voluntary associations

98 Cecilia Morgan, “‘When Bad Men Conspire, Good Men Must Unite!’: Gender and Political Discourses in Upper Canada, 1820s-1830s,” in Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, eds. Kathleen McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999) ; Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). To be sure, participation of women in the patriot cause did expand to slightly more active roles beyond what was publicly defined in the press as discussed below. 247

more generally. The patriot press made use of the ritualized female gaze, common for public political displays, to define the perceived proper place of women. One of the ways the patriots publicly acknowledged women’s participation in the movement was by strategically placing women to act as a conspicuous audience for male ceremony.99

In his 1847 memoir, patriot Daniel Heustis provided an account of events following his arrest by authorities on charges of breaching American neutrality laws.100

Heustis was served an indictment and ordered to travel to the trial site, accompanied by the U.S. marshal who had charged him. The marshal, reputedly wanting to enlarge his ego by “capturing a big fish,” asked Heustis to impersonate William Lyon Mackenzie when they stopped at a local tavern.101 Heustis wrote of the interest of those who had gathered at the tavern. He recounted how one tavern-goer had “sent his horse and sleigh the distance of a mile and a half, after his beloved wife, that she might see the distinguished stranger.”102 The man wished his wife to participate in support of the patriot movement, but her participation was limited to her gaze on a “distinguished” patriot.

Heustis ventured to the sitting room to find it full of women of all ages. They circled around him two to three deep. Heustis reasoned that “such manifestations of interest in the fate of those who have risked fortune and life in a struggle for liberty, are not uncommon. In all such contests the heart of WOMAN instinctively entwines its

99 Bruce Curtis and Mark Francis each discuss the importance of this in the “display of social virtues.” Mark Francis, Governors and Settlers: Images of Authority in the British Colonies, 1820-1860 (Houndmills,UK: MacMillan, 1992), 49-50; Bruce Curtis, “The ‘Most Splendid Pageant Ever Seen:’ Grandeur, the Domestic and Condescension in Lord Durham’s Political Theatre” Canadian Historical Review 89, no. 1 (2008): 55-88. 100 Heustis had played an active role in the abortive patriot raid on Hickory Island, Upper Canada on February 22, 1838. 101 Daniel D. Heustis, A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and His Companions, in Canada & Van Dieman’s [sic] Land. During a Long Captivity; with Travels in California, and Voyages at Sea (Boston: Silas W. Wilder, 1847), 35. 102 Ibid. 248

sympathies around the oppressed and unfortunate.”103 The language of sentiment, evident in the characterizations of patriot victimhood, extended to women to bind them to the cause but in a different role. Heustis was keen to use this story as an opportunity to publicly identify women in his memoir as supporters of the patriots and to signal the virtue of the cause. The female gaze spoke to contemporary gendered constructs of women as providing emotional support and a caring role in the home and public.104

Theller also defined female participation in the public sphere as spectators.

Patriots in Cleveland and Detroit participated in the civic welcome of Vice President

Richard Johnson during a tour of the region. In his Spirit of ’76, Theller noted that

“Patriot Artillery” had been lent to the “Johnson Committee” formed to welcome the

Vice President to Detroit.105 With a female audience in mind, Theller wrote that “our paper has become popular, and much read by the Ladies.”106 Following the headline

“LADIES!,” Theller directed women to prominent places to witness the demonstration for Johnson, These locations included “City Hall, National Hotel, and adjoining buildings, and gentlemen have been designated to pay you proper attention.”107 The instructions points to Theller’s desire to direct women in a manner similar to other public demonstrations where women were seated so that they could see and be seen by the male participants in the event.108

103 Ibid., 36-37. 104 Mylène Bédard, Écrire en temps d’insurrections: Pratiques épistolaires et usages de la presse chez les femmes patriotes (1830–1840) (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2016), 317. 105 PHOR, Box 4, Draft Address to Vice President Richard M Johnson upon his visit to Cleveland, 26 September 1840, Reply to the Address dated Detroit 30 September 1840; Spirit of ’76 28 September 1840. 106 Spirit of ’76 22 November 1839. 107 Spirit of ’76 28 September 1840. 108 The trend of placing women in a highly visible, if not ceremonial, position can be seen in the arrival of Governor-General Sydenham in Kingston in May 1841, his funeral on September, 19, 1841, an 1839 military demonstration for Durham in Montreal, and the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales. For Sydenham 249

As was the case outside of the patriot movement, gender constructs also directed patriot women’s organizing into “auxiliary roles” based on certain typically domestic talents coded as female, namely cooking and sewing. In Samuel Underhill’s Bald Eagle of Cleveland, a “True Patriot” asked if a benefit ball for distressed patriots could be organized by the citizens of the city where the “Ladies furnish the refreshments (as has been the case in Buffalo) and the gentlemen the room and music.” Underhill endorsed the idea and noted that similar events had taken place in Rochester and Watertown.109

Speaking at the celebration to honour Vice President Johnson’s visit to Detroit, Theller declared that “we always knew the ladies were Patriots [. . .] just witness their handy work at the Barbacue [sic] tables today.”110 The patriot press also celebrated women’s contribution of sewn articles to the patriots. In his published memoir, Heustis recounts how the Patriot Hunters at the Battle of the Windmill unfurled a flag that had been created by the “Patriotic ladies of Onondaga County.”111 Thus the extent to which women were regarded as patriots in the press was dependent on the quality of their female-coded labour. Women were structured by the press into “auxiliary” roles, albeit ones which still allowed for a political subjectivity on their part.

see Kingston Chronicle and Gazette 29 May 1841 p2 c5 and 25 September 1841 p2 c6. For the military demonstration, see Curtis, “Most Splendid Pageant,” 59. For the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales, see an engraving from the Illustrated Times copied by Ian Radforth. Ian Radforth, Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 117. 109 The Bald Eagle 1 January 1839 p3 c2. 110 Spirit of ’76 28 September 1840. 111 Heustis, Narrative, 44. Graves reports that Isabel Mackenzie used her sewing talents for a somewhat non-traditional purpose—sewing cartridges for muskets. Graves, Guns Across the River, 35. Perhaps the reference by Heustis invoked in the minds of his American readers the memory of Betsy Ross and the “flag of ’76.” 250

In British North America, both cooking and sewing were similarly coded as the main acceptable forms of female public participation.112 Endeavouring to define their movement in exile, patriots borrowed and reinforced those boundaries of respectability.

As noted in Chapter 3, many members of the patriot press held radical views of gender equality. However, these values did not make it into their public pronouncements. To speak to a desired audience, the patriot press used the gendered conventions and tropes of the day.

When women did organize publicly for the patriot cause, it was predominantly in avenues seen as acceptable to women’s participation: boycotts and benevolence. In conformity with sewing as women’s work, during the non-importation campaign in

Lower Canada, women had taken an active part in the creation, consumption, and promotion of homemade goods.113 Similar boycotts emerged after the exile of the patriot movement to the United States. A patriot association in Rochester in December 1838 passed a pledge that those in attendance would boycott British goods and would work to spread this ban to the surrounding county. Directly referencing the boycotts of the

112 Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women, 48. Bonnie Huskins: “From Haute Cuisine to Ox Roasts: Public Feasting and the Negotiation of Class in Mid-19th-Century Saint John and Halifax,” Labour/Le Travail 37 (1996): 9-36. In Kingston, Harriet Dobbs Cartwright was limited to organizing lunches for her husband’s electoral campaign. Queen’s University Archives, Harriet Dobbs Cartwright Fonds (HDCF), Cartwright Family Letterbook, 226. The role of women in sewing articles has arguably much more significance since banners were an important display, the physical presentation of which created a highly visible gendered ritual of public participation. Women created banners and flags that they presented to male fraternities, voluntary associations, and militia units in the Canadas. See David Sutherland, “Voluntary Societies and the Process of Middle-Class Formation in Early-Victorian Halifax,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 5, no.1 (1994): 252. During the Rebellion, women had sewn flags for patriote forces who would be involved in the Battle of Ste. Eustache. Boissery and Paterson, “Women’s Work,” 359. The Western Herald recounted the ceremony of new colours being presented by the ladies of Sandwich to the local militia: Western Herald 31 January 1838 p28 c1-2. Such gendered ceremonies, however, did not rely exclusively on sewn articles. A group of women presented a mace to a voluntary militia battalion, the Queen’s Own Rifles, in the early 1860s. See Chambers, Ernest, History of the Queen’s Own Rifles: A History of a Splendid Regiment’s Origin (Toronto: Ruddy, 1901), 49. 113 Boissery and Paterson, “Women’s Work,” 359–360. 251

American Revolution, the association requested: “Let the pledge be conscientiously observed, as our ancestors observed their pledge against the use of Tea, and let us persevere till the end is accomplished.”114 While the names of those undertaking this pledge are not known, women joined such pledges in other boycotts. As historian

Timothy Breen found in the American Revolution, while such initiatives were developed by male politicians, women could—and often did—take part in boycotts and non- importation campaigns.115

Patriot women also formed their own voluntary associations, although they were restricted to the realm of traditional female benevolence. An example reported in the patriot press involved a group of women who met in the ladies’ parlour of the United

States Hotel in Buffalo on the first anniversary of the burning of the Caroline. The meeting resulted in the formation of the Buffalo Ladies Benevolent Society. Made up of an executive of women who occupied the roles of president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer and a committee of seven, the society resolved to meet monthly. The proceedings of their meeting were originally published in one of that city’s patriot papers, the Buffalonian. The story was copied and commented on by other patriot papers based in

Rochester and Cleveland, and a contributor published a letter thanking the “ladies” for their patriotism.116

114 Patriot Association, at the last meeting of our association, a pledge in the following words was presented for the consideration of the members (Rochester, N.Y.: n.p., 1838) Baldwin Room Ephemera, CIHM Microfiche. 115 T. H. Breen, “Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1993): 471-501.Breen later enlarged this focus into his book, Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford, 2004). 116 Bald Eagle 8 January 1839 p1 c1-3; Mackenzie’s Gazette January 12 1839 p267 c 1-4. See also Mackenzie’s Gazette March 9 1839 p300 c4. The Freeman’s Advocate also noted the formation of the society and gave the names of the principal officers. Freeman’s Advocate 11 January 1839 p7 c3. 252

The society resolved to dedicate itself to “relieving the sufferings of such

Canadian Patriots of their families as may be thrown destitute among us, and to aid them in their laudable efforts to break the galling chains of the oppressor.”117 This sentence seems to inch beyond benevolence for the needy and points to a different understanding of the possibilities of political engagement for women in public. Here patriot women spoke the same language of victimization as male patriots, making reference to “galling chains” and “suffering.” Patriots appear to have accepted this form of politicized benevolence by women. It is possible that this statement—more political than what was commonly accepted for women in the press in the Canadas—is representative of what historians have termed “republican motherhood.”118 Mary Kelley argues that the involvement of women in literary societies and reform organizations helped lay the groundwork for women’s increasing involvement in civil society.119 This could also be the case when women engaged with the patriot cause and were recognized in the press for their contributions.

The Buffalo Ladies Benevolent Society also attracted attention from across the border in Upper Canada. While not publishing its proceedings, the constitutionalist

Cobourg Star published a long article ridiculing the organization. Its editor, R. D.

Chatterton, wrote that “The working of flags and making of shirts and stockings for

117 Bald Eagle 8 January 1839 p1 c2. The use of “of” instead of “and” is slightly confusing but could indicate that the society was concerned with supporting the families of refugees. The focus on families suggest that even if the rhetoric of the Buffalo Ladies Benevolent Association was political, its organizing was directed at women and children conforming to notions of female association with the domestic sphere. 118 See Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women for contemporary gender norms around women’s public participation in Upper Canada. For the U.S. and conceptions of republican motherhood see Linda Kerber, ““I Have Don … much to Carrey on the Warr”: Women and the Shaping of Ideology after the American Revolution” in Women and Politics in the Age of Democratic Revolution. ed H. B Applewhite and D. G. Levy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). 119 Mary Kelly, Learning to Stand and Speak. 253

runaways and rebels, may be a very lady-like and interesting occupation; but a public meeting of petticoat sympathisers is a farce so ridiculous—an exhibition so unwonted and uncalled for.” Chatterton claimed initially to believe the story fictitious until he enquired and “found that the names were real, and the women (we beg pardon, ‘ladies’) were well known to several persons here.”120

Chatterton’s report provoked public discussion in Cobourg. A writer named

“Quiz” sent a letter to the editor on the Buffalo group, which Chatterton declined to print because it “would shock ‘the delicacy’ of those advocates of rebellion.”121 As an opponent of the patriots, Chatterton looked upon such a patriot meeting as a sign of their political disorder and lack of respectability. However, Chatterton’s response indicates different understandings by patriots in the U.S. and constitutionalists in Upper Canada regarding the boundaries of female participation in the public sphere. Chatterton stated

“we say it with pride, we have never yet known British or Canadian Women [to] go quite so far as a public political meeting.” Most notably, Chatterton withheld markers of respectability from the women in Buffalo as a way to belittle the appropriateness of their organizing and their cause. He selectively used the term “lady”—the “lady-like” auxiliary work of producing socks and flags—in contrast to the “farce” of “women” holding a public meeting to support the patriots.122

Chatterton had earlier used cartoonish reports of female organizing to attack patriots. The Cobourg Star carried the proceedings of “a meeting of elderly females” from the Kingston area. At the meeting, attendees with such names as “Mrs. Dora

120 Cobourg Star 9 January 1839 p2 c4. The knowledge of some in Cobourg of a number of Patriot women in Buffalo speaks to the tightknit nature of a Rebellion-era borderlands community. 121 Ibid. 23 January 1839 p2 c5. 122 Ibid. 9 January 1839 p2 c4. 254

Dauntless” and “Dame Dorcas Dreadnaught” resolved unanimously to “form ourselves into a company of elderly females for the protection of our shores”. Well-armed with

“mop-sticks and broom handles,” the women declared that the “band of dastardly Yankee pirates and outlaws” would never attack when male soldiers and militia were present.

Since such military service was keeping their husbands and sons “from their lawful avocations,” the company of women would take over the burden and felt “fully competent to defend their homes.” Beyond defending their homes, the women offered their services to the United States government to help enforce the neutrality laws and mocked the “impotence and subjugation” of Governor Marcy of New York in the face of the patriots.123 Organizing by women as a militia was a humourous foil to denigrate the masculinity of the patriots and of republican government, both too afraid to attack fellow male soldiers and who would easily be a match for women—elderly no less—with broom and mop handles. The meeting’s proceedings also mocked the masculinity of the

“impotent” and “subjugated” authorities in the United States needing assistance from the elderly women of the Kingston area.

Mackenzie’s Gazette copied a patriot toast that played on the theme of women- and-broomsticks as an easy match for opponents. The toast was to “The 5000 with which the Tory papers of Canada boasted they could march from Maine to Florida, burn and destroy our cities, our shipping in our harbours, and lay the whole country under contribution—Let us keep our women from knocking out their brains with broomsticks.”124 While patriots in the United States were not mocking female organizing,

123 Cobourg Star copied in the British Whig, 17 March 1838 p1 c 4-5. 124 Mackenzie’s Gazette 16 June 1838 p44 c1. 255

the trope of women and broomstick defeating armed male opponents crossed the border.

The need for the patriots to organize benevolent and other organizations to support the exiles and sustain the movement did, however, make them more vulnerable to attack on this front.

The patriot press policed firm boundaries around women’s public participation when it thought these boundaries were transgressed. While patriots in the United States accepted the public, political stance of the Buffalo Ladies Benevolent society despite constitutionalist attacks, at other times they reacted negatively to female participation. In

November of 1838, William Lyon Mackenzie organized a patriot meeting with paid admission in New York City. Mackenzie invited noted social reformer Frances Wright to address the gathering. As Wright began to speak, she triggered “uproar and confusion” and the meeting “became very disorderly.”125 the response may have been due to attendees not wanting to hear either a woman or a woman with radical views. When

Wright and Mackenzie transgressed these boundaries, the attendees reinforced them.

Another incident involving women and patriot organizing concerned efforts in

Detroit to secure William Lyon Mackenzie’s release from imprisonment in Rochester after his conviction in June 1839 for violating American neutrality laws. A number of patriots in Detroit circulated a petition for his release. In his Spirit of ’76, Theller reported that “nearly fifteen hundred of our most respectable citizens signed it.” However, Theller was incensed that the petition was left at a bar resulting in the collection of certain

“irreputable” signatures including “Peggy Welsh and the inmates of her BROTHEL.”

125 See Eugene P. Link“Vermont Physicians and the Canadian Rebellion of 1837.” Vermont History 37 (1969): 182 for the former description of the scene. For the latter, see Corey, Crisis of 1830-42, 84. 256

Theller explained to his readers that such signatures were the result of a scheme to leave the petition in a compromising location by a lawyer and other “members of the aristocracy.”126 The discrediting of a petition by noting its inclusion of disreputable signatures, such as those of women, boys, or men of low social standing, was a common tactic in British North America.127 In Theller’s view, clear boundaries of gendered respectability were prerequisites to protect the reputation of the patriot community and to claim political standing. One of the political venues open to women in the nineteenth century was petitioning. In this case, however, the women in question were publicly rejected by a patriot organizer for not meeting societal norms of respectability.

Patriot women did break with gender constructs around voluntary associations and political involvement during the military conflict, from producing materiel, giving initiation oaths, and couriering notes, to spying.128 Such non-traditional involvement never amounted to engaging actively in military violence. From the perspective of patriot community-building, what is interesting is that when these noteworthy military activities

126 Spirit of ’76 17 August 1839. 127 For scholarship on petitioning by women in British North America, see Gail G. Campbell, “Disenfranchised but Not Quiescent: Women Petitioners in New Brunswick in the Mid-19th Century,” Acadiensis 18, no. 2 (1989): 22–54. This included political petitions on subjects such as temperance (36- 39). Lex Heerma van Voss, ed. Petitions in Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Wilton, Popular Politics, 7, 43, passim. 128 A report to British authorities from a confidential agent on the New York side concerning Navy Island recounted that “the very Women are inciting the Men to proceed to the frontiers of New York.” In the agent’s view, women could influence men to take up arms and fight for the patriot cause, just as they could not. The report also described the collection of arms, money, and men in “all the small towns in the interior” including one woman who produced shot rounds in a mould—sixty at a time—in her home. A confidential agent to James Cummings, magistrate at Chippawa, quoted in E. A. Cruikshank, “The Invasion of Navy Island in 1837-8” Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records 32 (1937): 29. Guillet regrettably takes this from Cruikshank without citation. See Edwin Guillet, Life and Times, 179. For women making bullets in Lower Canada in 1837, see Beverley Boissery and Carla Paterson, “‘Women’s Work’: Women and Rebellion in Lower Canada, 1833–9,” in Canadian State Trials: Vol.II; Rebellion and Invasion in the Canadas, 1837 –1839 eds. F. Murray Greenwood and Barry Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 361. In at least one instance in Lower Canada, women’s activities—going beyond traditionally understood boundaries—indeed took place within a voluntary association. Marguerite-Julie Cornelier administered the oath for membership in the Hunterss as her husband was illiterate and continued to do so even when other literate Hunters were present. Boissery and Paterson, “Women’s Work,” 362. 257

by women—going beyond traditional gender boundaries—were discussed in the public sphere, it was done in a way that described how the actions were manly but also noted their exceptional feminine beauty. The exploits of Eunice Whiting and Anna Burch are a case in point.129 Eunice Whiting had carried dispatches and notes to and from Navy

Island, dressing as a man to expedite these travels. On one occasion, she took the first horse she could find and wound up imprisoned in Kingston Penitentiary for a sentence of horse-stealing.130 Anna Burch and her work as a spy for the rebels in Upper Canada are described by her nephew, the patriot colonel Lewis Alderbert Norton, in his memoir published in the 1880s. Norton recounts how Burch, acting as a “doctress” and a herbalist, traversed Upper Canada and thereby became acquainted with a good deal of valuable information. She used such information to warn rebels of their impending arrest as well as slipping a note to Norton on troop movements around London.131

Charles Dickens’s account of his travels in North America, admittedly written to entertain English readers with larger-than-life tales, included a description of Whiting.

Both the description of Whiting by Dickens and the depiction by Norton of Burch were careful to typecast the actions of these women—a dispatch-rider and a spy—as manly, while also associating their bodies with exceptional feminine beauty. Dickens devoted a great deal of attention to describing the surprising talents and appearance of the lady spy from Navy Island: “she always rode as a boy would, which was nothing for her, for she

129 There were possibly other examples although they are scant. On the Constitutionalist side, a Colonel G. D. Catlin wrote that a Charlotte and Cornelia De Grassi rode through rebel lines. Toronto Reference Library, Guillet Papers (GP), Rebellion of 1837 papers O.S., “Guillet – 1837 Catalogue, Correspondence, Documents,” Colonel G. D. Catlin to Mr. W. S. Wallace [undated]. 130 Dennis Curtis and Cecilia Blanchfield, Kingston Penitentiary: the first hundred and fifty years, 1835– 1985 (Ottawa: Correctional Service of Canada, 1985), 86. 131 Lewis Alderbert Norton, Life and Adventures of Col. L. A. Norton, Written by Himself (Oakland, CA: Pacific Press Publishing House 1887), 58-59. 258

could govern any horse that any man could ride.” Dickens elaborated that although

Whiting had a “lovely face,” there was “a lurking devil in her bright eye.”132 Norton described his aunt “as agile as a cat, brave as a lion, and one of the finest female equestrians that I ever met.” Norton outlined a proposal that his aunt had given to the rebels on how they could capture London, exclaiming in his memoir: “it was a bold conception for the woman.”133 At the same time, Norton stated that his aunt, although around forty years old, “would not have been taken for more than thirty. She was of very fair complexion, with auburn hair, and coal-black eyes, and I thought her the prettiest woman I ever saw.”134 Actions by women that challenged gender norms were combined in the public sphere with references to those women’s exceptional beauty. Even though some patriot editors were committed to rights for women, this did not translate into commentary on the matter in the patriot press or subsequent memoirs. Instead, when it came to female patriot organizing, editors worked to direct that organizing within the norms proscribed by Jacksonian America—even if those norms did raise consternation in the Canadas.

Conclusion

In exile, the patriot press remained crucial to continued patriot organizing. Patriot papers offered positive coverage and support for patriot military initiatives. In addition, many members of the patriot press were involved in patriot military organizing. The patriot press actively performed these roles but only in a manner that fit with their belief

132 Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, [1842] 1972), 80. 133 Norton, Life and Adventures, 59. 134 Ibid., 58. 259

in liberal voluntary associations as well as their concerns to define a patriot community in exile. Some members of the patriot press expressed a dislike of oath-bound associations such as the Hunters’ Lodges. However this dislike did not stop patriot papers from using the ritual and information of secret patriot societies for their own ends. Notices of patriot secret organizing were common in American, constitutionalist, and patriot papers.

Patriots and constitutionalists used references to these secret societies in their conflict across the border. Patriots also used references to secret organizing, through reference to loafers and Hunters, redaction, and the use of secret code. All of these ploys had a single purpose: to gesture to readers that they were part of a larger, highly active, and highly successful community of individuals committed to Canadian independence and to draw connections to a broader republican movement and symbols of the American Revolution and War of 1812. Patriot editors also worked to expand or limit the boundaries of who was (or should be) a patriot with factors such as national identity at play. In respect to the role of women in the patriot movement, the patriot press chose to work within the proscribed norms of female voluntary participation in Jacksonian America and endeavoured to direct women’s organizing into defined “auxiliary roles” and to police closely contraventions of those norms.

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Conclusion

“The Spirit of 1837 Lives On:” Memory, Alternatives, and the Patriot Press Palimpsest

By the start of 1842, it was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the patriot movement, now four years into exile. In October 1841 Alexander McLeod had been acquitted for his part in the burning of the Caroline, thus extinguishing one of the last focal points of American public indignation against Britain. In fact, in early 1842 it was a group of constitutionalists who took the initiative to enflame border tensions and enliven the patriot movement in the United States: John Hogan, working under the direction of a former employer, A. K. Mackenzie of Hamilton, twice attempted to get himself arrested in the U.S. for his role in helping to destroy the Caroline. Both times American authorities determined that they “could not properly try him.” In April 1842, Lord

Ashburton arrived in Washington as the British negotiator entrusted to work toward a peaceful solution to the frictions between the U.S. and Great Britain.1 The continuing patriot struggle had exacted a personal toll on refugees and their American sympathizers; demoralized, impoverished, imprisoned, and deceased; patriots could no longer sustain their newspapers.2

1 J. E. Rea, “Alexander McLeod,” DCB; Elizabeth Waterston, “John Sheridan Hogan,” DCB; Lillian F. Gates, After the Rebellion: The Later Years of William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996), 98–99; E. D. Adams, “Lord Ashburton and the Treaty of Washington,” American Historical Review 17 (1912): 770. 2 Mackenzie had been imprisoned for violating American neutrality laws. In January 1842 he issued a broadside from the now very irregularly published Volunteer ending that papers’ association with the patriot cause. Gates, After the Rebellion , chapters 4–6. Edward Alexander Theller, who had closed both his Detroit Spirit of ’76 and his New York City Truth, was in dire financial straits. Colin Read, “Edward Alexander Theller, the ‘Supreme Vagabond:’ ‘Honest, Courageous, and True?’” Ontario History, 84 (1992), According to biographer Denis Monière, Ludger Duvernay, who had shuttered his Patriote 261

Against this backdrop, patriot public writings, begun while the patriot press was still in existence, continued and became the sole thrust of the movement long after military expeditions and organizing had ended. First came eight memoirs—published between1843 and 1850—of patriots who returned after being sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.3 More published recollections of patriots continued to appear decades after the Rebellion: two in the 1850s and then a remaining three in 1880, 1887, and 1898.4 Published personal accounts appeared in various newspapers throughout the period as well.5

canadien in the face of its financial difficulties could no longer keep up his “rétorique mobilisatrice.” Denis Monière, Ludger Duvernay et la revolution intellectuelle au Bas-Canada (Montréal: Éditions Québec/Amérique, 1987), 159. The Sublime Patriot of Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, closed just a few months after its start in November 1841. Lillian F. Gates, “Thomas Jefferson Sutherland,” DCB. Jackson Abraham Vail had co-founded with Hiram Thomas the North American of Swanton, Vermont in April 1839, only to see it cease publication in August 1841. A nineteenth-century Vermont historian later commented that Vail “was a brilliant lawyer, but his habits were such that he threw away his great opportunities.” William Adams, ed. The Gazetteer of Washington County, Vt., 1783-1889 (Syracuse: The Syracuse Journal Company, 1889), part 1, 67. Outside of patriot editors the horizons were not any brighter. Siméon Marchessault and William Putnam are striking examples of the impact of the Rebellion on the lives of patriots. From the time he took up arms at Saint-Denis in November 1837 until his return to Lower Canada in October 1840, Marchessault fought in two battles, was thrown in prison, transported to Bermuda, and exiled to the U.S. Michel De Lorimier, “Siméon Marchesseault” DCB. Siméon Marchesseault, Lettres à Judith: Correspondance d’un patriote exilé, ed. Georges Aubin (Sillery: Septentrion, 1996). A respected leader in his community east of London in Upper Canada before the Rebellion, Putnam was killed in the Battle of Windsor. Colin Read, “William Putnam,” DCB. A respected and prosperous farmer, Lucien Gagnon left the patriot movement in 1840 and passed away penniless in exile in 1842. Richard Chabot, “Lucien (Julien) Gagnon,” DCB. 3 Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman's Land: Written During Four Years Imprisonment for Political Offences Committed in Upper Canada (Buffalo: A. W. Wilgus, 1843); Stephen Smith Wright, Narrative and recollections of Van Diemen’s Land during a three years captivity of Stephen S. Wright. . . (New York: J. Winchester, 1844); L. Ducharme, Journal d’un Exile Politique aux Terres Australes (Montreal: F. Cinq- Mars, 1845), Ducharme was variously known as Louis-Léandre or Léon-Léandre; see “notice biographique” in the reprinted version (Montreal: Réédtion Québec, 1968); Samuel Snow, The Exile's Return, Or, A Narrative of Samuel Snow: Who was Banished to Van Diemen's Land, for Participating in the Patriot War in Upper Canada, in 1838 (Cleveland: Snead & Cowles, 1846), Linus W. Miller, Notes of an exile to Van Dieman’s Land. . . (Fredonia, NY: W. McKinstry & co, 1846). Robert Marsh, Seven Years of my Life, or Narrative of a Patriot Exile… (Buffalo: Faxton and Stevens, 1847); Daniel Heustis, A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and his companions in Canada and Van Dieman’s land. . . (Boston: Silas W. Wilder, 1847); William Gates, Recollections of Life in Van Dieman’s Land (Lockport, NY: D. S. Crandall, 1850). See also Résumé impartial de la discussion Papineau-Nelson sur les évènements de St-Denis en 1837 (Montreal: np., 1848). 4 Jedediah Hunt, An Adventure on a Frozen Lake: A Tale of the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-8; and The Massacre at Oswego, an Indian Tale (Cincinnati: Ben Franklin Book and Job Office, 1853), Lucius Verus 262

Although the vast majority were by Americans and were written in English, surviving long after organizing or military engagements, the impetus to speak about the

Rebellion in print was a powerful force. Félix Poutré, a crown informant transformed his bit part in the Rebellion into that of a swashbuckling, wily, and ardent patriote. During his lifetime, Poutré’s memoir went through multiple French editions, an English translation, and was spun off into a popular play.6 The palimpsest of the patriot press could thus make converts to the cause even long after the Rebellion.

In 1937, while writing his history of the patriots, historian Edwin C. Guillet received a letter from the elderly Harriet Jeanette Miller Thompson. She informed Guillet that she was the last “surviving child of Linus Wilson Miller, patriot, gentleman, who suffered cruel indignities because of his efforts to help Canada achieve her freedom from

England’s domination, as the U.S. had done.”7 Even one hundred years later, Miller

Thompson reached back to the talking points of the patriot press: the anti-British sentiment, the “domination” of the Canadas, the suffering of patriots, their upright and

Bierce, Historical Reminiscences of Summit County (Akron: T. and H. G. Canfield, 1854), 5-7. Bierce continued to refer to himself with the rank of general from his time with the patriots; François Xavier Prieur, Notes d’un Condamné Politique de 1838 (Montreal: Librairie Saint-Joseph, 1884) was first serialized in 1864 and published in 1880. See John Hare and Renée Landry “Introduction” in Hypolite Lanctot, Souvenirs d’un patriote exile en Australie (Sillery: Septentrion, 1999), 9-10; Lewis Alderbert Norton, Life and adventures of Col. L.A. Norton (Oakland: Pacific Press Pub. House, 1887); Thomas Storrow Brown, 1837, My Connection with it (Montreal: Raoul Renault, 1898). 5 Queen’s University Archives, Location 2999, Accessions 1979-064, “Nelson H. Truax, Last Survivor of the Patriot War” (The article is a clipping on Truax from the Watertown Daily Times); Onondaga Historical Association, Patriot war – Vertical file, Military History – Patriot’s War – General, W. M. Beauchamp letter to the ed. Syracuse Post Standard, July 5 1906, “Patriot’s War, Recollection from the Liverpool Telegraph 1894;” Buffalo History Museum, Harris, George H. “Letter to George G. Barnum, 1885”; 5 January 1866 (obituary of Louis Perrault); Minerve 10 April 1873 (biography of Robert Nelson soon after his death). 6 Félix Poutré, Échappé de la potence: souvenirs d’un prisonnier d’État canadien en 1838 (Montreal: E. Senécal, 1862); Jean-Pierre Gagnon and Kenneth Landry, “Félix Poutré,” DCB. 7 GP, Rebellion of 1837 papers O.S., Guillet – 1837 Catalogue, Correspondence, Documents, Harriet Jeanette Miller Thompson to Edwin C. Guillet, July 3, 1937. 263

manly character, and the comparisons to other revolutions—notably the American

Revolution.

Even as Miller Thompson, at 80 years old, kept the true sentiments of patriots alive, the legacy of the patriots was, that year, being put to a new use: the Mackenzie-

Papineau Battalion, a volunteer military force organized by Canadian communists to fight on the side of the democratically elected government of Spain. In an ironic twist, the

‘Mac-Paps,’ as the contingent came to be called, upended some key aspects of the patriots’ history: now it was those from Canada who were the itinerant revolutionaries and, as historian Victor Hoar has noted, rather than support a rebellion, the Mac-Paps were formed to put one down. In addition, while the patriot movement reflected a left- economic radicalism, it predated communism and its economic program had its limits.8 In fact, the Mac-Pap’s co-namesake, Louis-Joseph Papineau, had actually left the movement once in exile over its commitment to abolish the seigneurial system.9 The patriots were now re-cast for a fight against fascism in Europe, not for republicanism in the Canadas.

Nevertheless, Rebellion imagery figured prominently at a rally for the Mac-Paps in

Toronto which featured a large banner with the faces of Mackenzie and Papineau and the slogan “the spirit of 1837 lives on.”10

Even later, the Quebec nationalist group, the Front de libération du Québec, turned to Rebellion imagery. For example, the cell responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Quebec politician Pierre Laporte was named after one of the figures in the

8 Julien Mauduit, “L’économie politique des patriotes, entre capitalisme et socialisme,” Bulletin d'histoire politique 25, no. 2 (2017): 172–192. 9 Victor Hoar The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion: Canadian Participation in the Spanish Civil War (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1969), 107, 120; Fernand Ouellet, “Louis-Joseph Papineau,” DCB. 10 See Hoar, Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, picture plate obverse from page 149. 264

Rebellion, Jean-Olivier Chénier leader of the Patriots at the Battle of Saint-Eustache. The

FLQ again upended the patriots’ history. The FLQ’s commitment to a specific ethnic and linguistically defined nationalism erased Anglophones who were in the patriot movement as well as the fact that the movement, although concentrated in the District of Montreal, spanned the two Canadas. Moreover, the FLQ’s fear of continentalism and American imperialism was directly counter to the patriots’ embrace of American republicanism.11

The Mac-Paps and the FLQ did not share the same goals that the patriots were fighting for. However, their desire to attach the Rebellion to their projects over a century later speaks to the continuing resonance of the patriots’ attempts at community formation. The importance of the Rebellion as a project of order is reflected in the fact that the Rebellion is such a touchstone for alternatives.

Beginning with the passage of the Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1834, the Canadas witnessed the growth of militarized voluntary associations. These groups emerged out of, and were defended on the basis of, a belief in the positive benefits of liberal voluntary organizing. First undertaken by constitutionalists with the formation of the British Rifle

Corps, this militarized organizing points to the Rebellion as emerging partially from liberal voluntary organizing and not only conservative mob violence. Through voluntary organizing and sympathetic newspapers, patriots and constitutionalists worked at different times to construct an order outside state structures. As part of this increasingly heated political rhetoric, July 4, 1836 saw the first developments towards the formation of a patriot press defined by its republicanism and commitment to independence for the

11 Jean-Paul Bernard, “Jean-Olivier Chénier,” DCB; Marty Wood, “Unresolved Issues: The Roots of the 1970 FLQ Crisis in the Rebellions of 1837-1838 in Lower Canada” in Engaging Terror: A Critical and Interdisciplinary Approach, M. Vardalos, G. K. Letts, H. M. Teixeira, A. Karzai, and J. Haig, eds. (Boca Raton, FL: Brown Walker Press, 2009), 287-291. 265

Canadas. This press was committed to erasing the boundary between monarchy and republic in North America.

With the outbreak of armed insurrection in November 1837, the members of the patriot press were compelled to flee into exile. In exile, the border that the patriot editors had sought to erase became much more physically present. Now the continued survival of the patriot press depended on that border’s permanence for refuge from British reprisal.

The patriot press now existed separate from newspapers in the Canadas and the United

States. Rather than patriot voices being silence after November 1837, the patriot press in exile debated vigourously with constitutionalist papers in the Canadas, sending and receiving correspondence and newspapers across the border as well as argument and rhetoric. In exile, the individuals associated with the patriot press were now as a group more radical in respect to a number of causes. However, only some of their radical views were reflected in their papers while others were ignored, reflecting choices that the patriots made around how the patriot community would be defined in exile.

The patriot press built a community in exile through reference to a common suffering, perpetrated—at least in their minds—especially by Blacks and Indigenous

Peoples controlled by their opponents. Even though some members of the patriots expressed concern for racialized peoples, in their press they attacked them. Patriot newspapermen sacrificed their ideals on this front, instead deploying tropes that would evoke sympathy and support. The patriots in exile placed themselves in a revolutionary tradition and continued to believe in voluntarist values and attacked monarchy for being contrary to those values. Finally, the patriot press worked to organize the patriots in exile, speaking positively of military organizing and providing platforms for those who

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undertook incursions to defend their conduct. Some members of the patriot press were concerned about secret organizing as it did not fit with their voluntarist values. However, patriot editors expressly harnessed secrecy— such as using purported secret codes, presenting redacted reports of patriot military organizing, and alluding to the double meaning of words such as “loafer”—all as a means to foster a sense of a patriot community in exile. When the patriot press in exile organized, it concerned itself with defining the boundaries of membership and acceptable forms of participation in the patriot community in exile. National origin and gender were lenses applied by the patriot press in seeking to define these boundaries. Although certain patriots held progressive gender norms, the patriot press worked to proscribe women’s role to traditional auxiliary work associated with domesticity, again a decision to downplay certain ideals to conform to existing U.S. gender norms for women’s public participation.

The focus on voluntary associations and the press provides a number of insights into the Rebellion. Not only does such a lens reveal what patriots envisioned as an alternative but also how they worked to realize those goals and the choices they made to make their vision a reality. With the press, it is possible to follow the Rebellion beyond national boundaries and beyond the temporal divide of 1837. The Rebellion then emerges as a continuous process rather than a series of discrete conflicts and organizing in exile becomes more than a march towards the formation of the Hunters’ Lodges. This longer view also reveals that the conclusion that radical reform voices grew silent after the

Rebellion has less to do with their silence and more to do with where historians have looked for them. More broadly, it casts violence and deliberation as not exclusive.

267

In the preface to the 2015 edition of the much reprinted Why Men Rebel, Ted

Robert Gurr describes the key challenges currently facing democratically elected governments and modern civil society. Gurr states: “What we do not understand […] is how skilled communicators can create a sense of identity and common purpose that transcends national boundaries and then use it to mobilize people in many different places for coordinated political action.” In taking up this challenge, we would do well to learn from the patriot press and the significant role it played in a time of turbulence.12

12 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015) Introduction to the Fortieth Anniversary Paperback Edition, vi. 268

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Subject – Author – Volume Aubin, Napoléon - Serge Gagnon - XI Barker, Edward John - John W. Spurr - XI Boston, John - Carman Miller - XI Bouchette, Robert-Shore-Milnes - Yves Tessier - X Chénier, Jean-Olivier - Jean-Paul Bernard -VII Côté, Cyrille-Hector-Octave - Richard Chabot - VII Dickson, John - Elizabeth Arthur -VII Dunlop, Robert Graham. Peter A. Russell -VII Duvernay, Ludger - Jean-Marie Lebel - VIII 301

Gagnon, Lucien (Julien) - Richard Chabot - VII Gowan, Ogle Robert - Hereward Senior - X Hincks, Francis - William G. Ormsby - XI Hindenlang, Charles - Claude Galarneau - VII Hogan, John Sheridan - Elizabeth Waterston - VIII Hunter, Charles - Ginette Bernatchez – VII LeSueur, William Dawson - Clifford G. Holland - XIV Lewis, Asahel Bradley - G. H. Patterson – VI M’Leod, Donald - Lillian Francis Gates - X Neilson, John - Sonia Chassé, Rita Girard-Wallot, and Jean-Pierre Wallot – VII Nelson, Robert - Richard Chabot, Jacques Monet, and Yves Roby – X O’Grady, William - Curtis Fahey - VII Papineau, Louis-Joseph - Fernand Ouellet - X Parent, Étienne - Jean-Charles Falardeau - X Poutré, Félix - Jean-Pierre Gagnon and Kenneth Landry - XI Sabrevois de Bleury, Clément-Charles - In Collaboration - IX Robinson, Sir John Beverley - Robert D. Saunders - IX Rolph, John - G. M. Craig – IX Sutherland, Thomas Jefferson - Lillian F. Gates – VIII Theller, Edward Alexander - Colin Frederick Read - VIII Tracey, Daniel - France Galarneau - VI Von Shoultz, Nils - Ronald J. Stagg - VII Wait, Benjamin - Colin Read - XII Wells, William Benjamin - J. K. Johnson - XI

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