Divided We Stand: The 1775 Campaign and the Rise of Nations, 1760-1815

by Nathan Wuertenberg

B.A. in History and Spanish, May 2012, McDaniel College M.A. in History, May 2014, Ball State University M.Phil. in History, January 2018, The University

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

August 31, 2020

Dissertation directed by

Denver Brunsman Associate Professor of History

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Nathan Wuertenberg has passed the Final Examination for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy as of July 17, 2020. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation.

Divided We Stand: The 1775 Quebec Campaign and the Rise of Nations, 1760-1815

Nathan Wuertenberg

Dissertation Research Committee:

Denver Brunsman, Associate Professor of History, Dissertation Director

David Silverman, Professor of History, Committee Member

Katrin Schultheiss, Associate Professor of History, Committee Member

ii

© Copyright 2020 by Nathan Wuertenberg All rights reserved

iii Dedication

To my wife, Jeneice, who made me better at 15 and makes me better at 30.

iv Acknowledgments

I have been extraordinarily fortunate in the company I keep outside the academy. My parents have constantly and consistently encouraged me to be inquisitive and enthusiastic about learning. My oldest friend, Benjamin Wilt, his wife Dorothy, his sisters Katie and

Hannah, his brother Zach, his cousins Peter and Marcus, and his parents Kelly and Sherry, have all instilled in me an appreciation of the value of kindness, hard work, and eternal optimism. My friends from McDaniel College, Jacob, Andrew, Dawn, Bryan, Lauren,

Laura, Sam, the Olivias, and the Betsys, made my time as an undergraduate worth every penny of student loan debt. My friends from Ball State University, Alex, Jen, and Jim, made two years in a studio apartment fly by. Those from George Washington, Andreas,

Johnny, Alexa, Lauren, Becky, Hillary, Andrea, and Sam, helped me survive the big city with a little more grace and a little less cynicism. I’m so grateful I’ve managed to stay in touch with everyone since leaving the city. I’m also grateful for everyone I’ve met since I did. I wouldn’t have survived my return to small town America without people like Olivia

Scott, Chelsea Latorre, Sutha Johnson, Sarah Cranstoun Palfrey, Mike McClung, Shelby

Donnelly, and Amanda Young.

I have been similarly fortunate within the academy. My undergraduate advisors, Drs.

Stephen Feeley, Amy McNichols, and Uriel Quesada, showed me how to translate a lifelong love of learning into a career. My M.A. advisor, Dr. Daniel Ingram, and my committee members, Drs. Jennifer DeSilva, Nicole Etcheson, and Douglas Seefeldt, prepared me in immeasurable ways for the many challenges of pursuing a doctorate in history. My Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Denver Brunsman, and committee members Drs. David

Silverman, Marcia Norton, Katrin Schultheiss, Trevor Jackson, and Gautham Rao, made

v those challenges inestimably more surmountable. Denver in particular has been a constant source of support, guidance, and assurance. So too has Sir Michael Weeks, who has been instrumental to the successful completion of my education and is a gentleman, scholar, and friend. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. James F. Jones, Jr., a personal mentor who has graciously shared the knowledge he has gained over the course of decades in the academy and offered me invaluable advice, encouragement, and assistance.

My good fortune in academia has been echoed during my various forays into the archives. The archivists and staff at the Library and Archives Canada, the National

Archives of the United Kingdom, the Public Library, the West Virginia &

Regional History Center, the Bibliothèque national de , American Antiquarian

Society, Houghton Library, and John Hay Library were unfailingly kind and helpful. Those at the archives at which I received fellowships, the Society of the Library in

Washington, D.C. and John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence,

Rhode Island, similarly went out of their way to make my time at their institutions as enriching and fulfilling as possible. Everyone I have met over the course of my research for this project has done much to ensure its success. Thank you.

vi Abstract of Dissertation

Divided We Stand: The 1775 Quebec Campaign and the Rise of Nations, 1760-1815

This dissertation is an exploration of the profound influence of violent conflict on the development of identities across imperial, national, racial, and cultural boundaries.

The study uses the 1775 rebel invasion of Quebec during the American War for

Independence as a window into such processes. An examination of the Quebec Campaign reveals the deep ties between the American War for Independence (1775-1783), the

Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the War of 1812 (1812-1815). During this broader era, American, British, French, Canadian, and indigenous identities coalesced into something resembling those observed in later periods.

Situating Quebec at the center of this narrative offers new insight into such processes. The British conquest of the province in the Seven Years’ War had important consequences not only for those within its borders but those without as well. Out of that event were born historical forces that – after being stretched and reformed by the course of the War for Independence – found their ultimate expression in the War of 1812 over five decades later.

Those forces related to identity formation were perhaps most impactful, driving the peoples of Quebec and the continent surrounding it to segregate themselves along the lines of race and culture. This division formed the foundation of the nations that emerged from this era in ’s history. It also had ramifications for those living across the Atlantic, where evolving notions of empire and nationhood in Britain and France struggled to keep pace with changes on the ground in the western hemisphere. As a

vii result, peoples across two continents experienced dramatic changes in how they defined themselves and others. Torn apart by decades of war, those peoples built the nations of

North America on the ashes of a common past. Divided, they stood and faced the future.

viii Contents

Dedication iv

Acknowledgments v

Abstract of Dissertation vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Surrounded by Conquests: Governing Quebec and the Borderlands, 1760-1778 30

Chapter 2: Command and Supply: Rebel Diplomacy, Military Necessity, and the Struggle for Quebecois and Indian Allies, 1760-1779 79

Chapter 3: Lafayette’s Little Irruption: French Reform, Noble Honor, and the Question of Quebec, 1760-1780 132

Chapter 4: Clash of Confederacies: The St. Lawrence Indians and the War for Independence, 1760-1781 179

Chapter 5: Governed by Conquests: Party Politics, Class Tensions, and Popular Resistance in Quebec, 1760-1786 235

Epilogue: More Scratching Pens: The Documents that Divided the Nations, 1783-1814 292

Bibliography 328

Introduction

In his journal of the ’s 1775 siege of Fort Saint-Jean, the British commander Major Charles Preston observed that “there were Englishmen fighting against

Englishmen, French against French and Indians of the same Tribe against each other.”1

Preston’s comment hints at the complex forces at play in determining loyalties and alliances in the larger War for Independence during which the siege of Fort Saint-Jean took place. Group identity did not always or consistently determine which side of the conflict individuals chose to support. In many respects the struggle for colonial independence took on shades of civil war, with combatants often facing members of their own communities across the battlefield in defiance of the edicts of their nominal leaders.2

In many others, however, the extent to which the boundaries dividing those communities had yet to solidify lends the conflict shades of something else entirely. The question of group identity itself during the period was considerably more muddled – and therefore less determinative of allegiance – than external appearances might suggest. A conflict in which Englishmen fought Englishmen, French fought French, and Indians fought Indians can thus be seen as something more than a struggle between communities or within them.

It can also be seen as a struggle to make communities as well.

The process of making communities has been described by a myriad of scholars studying a variety of topics using a plethora of terms.3 One of the most important

1 “Journal of the Siege of Fort St. Johns,” in Arthur G. Doughty, ed., Report of the Work of the Public Archives, for the Years 1914 and 1915 (Ottawa, ON: J. de L Taché, 1916), 19. 2 See David Armitage, “Civil War and Revolution,” Agora, 2009, 18-22. [provide the full citation as listed in the bibliography] 3 For just a small sampling of such studies, see The William and Mary Quarterly forum on “Ethnogenesis”: James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Mapping Ethnogenesis in the Early Modern Atlantic,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 181-208; James H. Sweet, “The Quiet Violence of Ethnogenesis,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 209-214; Claudio Saunt, “The Indians’ Old World,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 215-218; Pekka Hämäläinen, “Lost in

1 observations to emerge from this scholarship has been the extent to which opposition drives the formation of identities forward, pushing individuals and groups to define themselves in terms of their perceived opposites.4 This is as true of eighteenth-century

North America as it is of anywhere else.5 Early American identities are studies in opposition, with individuals and groups positioning their sense of self in relation to how they perceived both internal and external enemies. This process of triangulation accelerated immeasurably in moments of violent conflict, when opposition between peoples and cultures reached their zenith and threats from both without and within consequently seemed most compelling.

On one level, this dissertation is a study of such moments, an exploration of the profound influence of violent conflict on the development of identities across imperial, national, racial, and cultural boundaries. In this regard, I center my focus on the 1775 rebel invasion of Quebec that began with the siege of Fort Saint-Jean that Major Charles

Preston recorded in his journal. Only three professional historians have published

Transitions: Suffering, Survival, and Belonging in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 219-223; Laurent Dubois, “Complications,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 224-226; Christopher Hodson, “Weird Science: Identity in the Atlantic World,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 227-232; Karen B. Graubart, “Toward Connectedness and Place,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 233-235; Patrick Griffin, “A Plea for a New Atlantic History,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 236-239; and James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “On the Genesis of Destruction, and Other Missing Subjects,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 240-246. 4 The concept of oppositional identity formation finds its origins in the work of anthropologist Fredrik Barth. See Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (New York: Little, Brown, 1969). It can also be found in the research of historians. See, for example, Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 5 See, for example, the literature on the formation of colonial American whiteness in the era of independence: Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); Peter Rhoads Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009); David J. Silverman, “Racial Walls: Race and the Emergence of American White Nationalism,” in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman, eds., Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic (: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 181-204; and Robert G. Parkinson, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

2 monographs on the campaign, which focused primarily on rebel and Quebecois perspectives. Thus, I sought to provide a much-needed update to an unjustifiably underappreciated topic. Yet, as my exploration of the topic progressed and I dove deeper into the experiences and perspectives of the British, rebel, French, indigenous, and

Quebecois actors that took part in the campaign, I realized that understanding the events of 1775 and their consequences would necessitate a much broader focus. As a result, I have begun to think of the 1775 campaign as a window into historical processes that began with the British conquest of Quebec in the Seven Years’ War and concluded with the American invasion of Canada almost six decades later in the War of 1812. During this period, each of the groups named above were driven to form, test, and reform their personal and collective identities. Ultimately, they came to separate from each other, dividing themselves in real and imagined terms as nations.

An examination of the Quebec Campaign reveals the deep ties between the

American War for Independence (1775-1783), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the War of 1812 (1812-1815). That period represented an era in which American, British,

French, Canadian, and indigenous identities coalesced into something resembling those observed in later periods. For Britons the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War forced them to reevaluate the nature of their empire as they grappled with the task of incorporating a traditional enemy into their governing structures, a process that by the early nineteenth century resulted in a definition of that empire as a multiethnic confederation. For

Americans the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War produced the tensions that ultimately drove them to pull away from the British Empire and form their own national identity based on a racialized conception of citizenship during the War for Independence, an

3 identity cemented in the 1810s by the real and imagined victories of the War of 1812. For the French the loss of much of their North American empire drove them to emphasize the importance of regaining national honor by sabotaging the relationship between Britain and its colonies, an effort with such a huge financial outlay that it sowed the seeds of the

French Revolution and later nationalist expansion under Napoleon Bonaparte. The

Quebecois, meanwhile, gradually pulled themselves away from identities as French colonists to unite with their new British rulers under pressure from the threat of repeated instances of aggressive territorial expansion from the south in the 1750s, 1770s, and

1810s. Finally, the vulnerability of indigenous communities in eastern North America after France’s exit from the continent drove many among them to embrace the revitalizing and unifying power of pan-Indian identities, a process that resulted in pan-

Indian movements like the one under the Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa during the War of 1812.

Situating Quebec at the center of this narrative offers new insight into such processes. The British conquest of the province in the Seven Years’ War had important consequences not only for those within its borders but those without as well. Out of that event were born historical forces that – after being stretched and reformed by the course of the War for Independence – found their ultimate expression in the War of 1812 over five decades later. Those related to identity formation were perhaps most impactful, driving the peoples of Quebec and the continent surrounding it to segregate themselves along the lines of race and culture. This division formed the foundation of the nations that emerged from this era in North America’s history. It also had ramifications for those living across the Atlantic, where evolving notions of empire and nationhood in Britain

4 and France faced the challenge of imperial affairs that refused to meet expectations. As a result, peoples across two continents experienced important changes in their senses of belonging moving forward.

On another level, this dissertation also represents an acknowledgment of the extent to which the practical necessities of surviving a violent world impinged upon more ethereal notions of identity. While conceptions of self often motivated the decision- making processes that drove forward the policies and strategies of political and military leaders in this era, they also frequently took a backseat to the exigencies of winning wars and governing conquered peoples. The 1775 Quebec Campaign does much to highlight this fact, showcasing the frequency with which odd bedfellows were made in the era as a result of military and political pragmatism. The identities of the combatants involved in the campaign were real and important, but they were also in flux. In consequence, those combatants made alliances that traversed boundaries just as often as they upheld them.

Because of their experiences in the 1775 campaign and the larger war, however, such alliances became less and less common and more and more difficult to preserve.

The 1775 Quebec Campaign

The rebel invasion of Quebec during the War for Independence began in August of 1775 and followed four primary phases. In the first, which began on August 25,

General ordered approximately 1,200 men mustered at the recently captured to march into the northern province, ultimately capturing the city of on November 13. Meanwhile, in the second phase of the invasion, 1,100 men under Colonel marched through what is now Maine to initiate a siege of the city of Quebec, which they reached on November 14. Montgomery joined

5 Arnold on December 2 and together they assaulted the city on December 31. The assault ended with Arnold wounded, Montgomery dead, and 400 rebel soldiers captured.

Although Arnold (who took command of the Continental soldiers surrounding the city after Montgomery’s death) continued the siege for the next several months in the third phase, the defeat proved fatal to rebel hopes in the northern province. The arrival of

British reinforcements under General in May 1776 initiated the fourth and final phase of the campaign. Newly strengthened by Burgoyne’s troops, the British and

Quebecois forces under Quebec’s Governor Guy Carleton drove the rebels to retreat south along the St. Lawrence River toward . Within a few short weeks, those forces had been almost entirely expelled from the province of Quebec.

Only three major works of academic scholarship have been published that directly engage with the subject of the 1775 Quebec Campaign in its entirety: Justin H. Smith’s

1907 two-volume series Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony, Gustave Lanctot’s 1965 book Le Canada et la Révolution américaine, and Mark R. Anderson’s 2013 The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony.6 Each of these works were profoundly shaped by some of the most influential developments in the study of history over the course of the last century.

As a result, they present vastly divergent narratives of the rebel invasion of Quebec. The first, from the American historian Smith, portrayed the invasion as a campaign of liberation that was ultimately rejected by Quebecois habitants too ignorant to recognize its value. The second, from Quebecois scholar Gustave Lanctot, characterized the

6 Justin Harvey Smith, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony: Canada and the American War for Independence, 2 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907); Gustave Lanctot, Canada and the American War for Independence Canada & the American War for Independence: 1774-1783 (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1967); Mark R. Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America's War of Liberation in Canada, 1774-1776 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New , 2013).

6 campaign as one whose origins and outcome were rooted in and determined by the relationships negotiated between colonial classes. The third and most recent study, by military historian Mark R. Anderson, explores the sociopolitical factors hampering

Congressional efforts to incorporate the Quebecois into their vision of the rebellion. Each engages with the most prominent historiographical trends of their times: Smith’s with

Whig interpretations that began shortly after the American War for Independence itself,

Lanctot’s with the turn toward social histories in the mid-twentieth century, and

Anderson’s with the new military history that hit its stride in the 1990s.

In his 1907 Our Struggle, Smith characterized the Quebec invasion as a

“campaign of good intentions.”7 This view was heavily influenced by Smith’s sensibilities as a Whig historian. Few such scholars included the defeat of rebel arms in

Quebec during their narrations of the War for Independence. Smith’s examination of the

Quebec Campaign can thus, in some part, be seen as an attempt to incorporate the invasion into a broader Whig narrative that had largely ignored it. This attempt began in the very first pages of his examination. According to Smith, the rebel decision to invade

Quebec was primarily informed by what he deemed legitimate fears among members of the that the British ministry might wield the northern colony as its primary weapon in the imposition of tyranny in the lower . As Smith argued, however, Quebecois territory was less than fertile ground for the spread of liberty. “The great-great-grandfathers of the habitants in old France,” he declared, “had no strenuous cravings for ‘Liberty.’”8 “The peasant of Canada” had, in turn, he asserted,

“inherited this disposition and certain habits besides,” an inheritance that presumably

7 Smith, Our Struggle, 1:304. 8 Smith, Our Struggle, 2:208.

7 ensured their eventual rejection of rebel offers of liberation by the end of the Quebec

Campaign in 1776.9

French Canadian historian Gustave Lanctot’s work on the 1775 Quebec

Campaign in Le Canada et la Révolution américaine (1965), meanwhile, seems to have been informed primarily by the contributions of social historians. According to Lanctot, while many of the elite (seigneurs) enthusiastically called on their tenants, clients, and congregants to support the British regime in their province, many of the lower-class

Quebecois (habitants), in Lanctot’s words, “refused to serve as a buckler for conquerors who lacked the strength to defend themselves.”10 Instead, most attempted to maintain a sort of inconspicuous neutrality, deliberately failing to appear at British musters to defend the province while simultaneously resisting similar recruitment efforts by

Continental representatives from the invading rebel forces. As the value of Continental currency depreciated and rebel soldiers chose to requisition supplies by force from locals, however, the determination of habitants to maintain that neutrality began to dissipate rapidly. By the spring of 1776, Continental troops occupying key locations like Montreal and Trois-Rivières were faced with the threat of open rebellion among the Quebecois farmers in their districts, a threat that profoundly weakened any remaining rebel hopes that the northern province would join their union.

Mark R. Anderson borrows interpretive elements from both of his predecessors but focuses the majority of his attention on seeking to explain why the rebels failed so spectacularly to incorporate the Quebecois into their new union. According to him the fault lay primarily with Congress, which “launched a liberation campaign with scant

9 Smith, Our Struggle, 2:209. 10 Lanctot, Canada, 213.

8 Canadian support, then executed it with insufficient energy and means to achieve its objectives.”11 The root of the issue, he argues, was a Congressional “proclivity to read

‘indications of sentiment’ as they expected them to be” and so failed to engage in a

“deliberate consideration of how the United Colonies might foster a Canadian patriot movement if it failed to bloom.”12 This lack of commitment among Congressional leaders to follow things through, he contends, left the Continental Army officers and soldiers dealing with things as they stood on the ground without the support they needed to implement an effective occupation of the northern province. In his estimation, then, the invasion failed not in the spring and summer of 1776 but the moment the Continental

Army set foot in Quebec.

Each of these works is a product of its times. Smith and Anderson both center rebel experiences in their narratives, but – separated by over a century of intervening scholarship – come to drastically different conclusions as to who was responsible for the campaign’s failure. The former, steeped in a century of American triumphalism, faults the Quebecois for a failure to recognize the perceived superiority of Anglophone ideologies and culture. The latter, a former Air Force officer, eschews questions of cultural superiority and can’t help but lay blame at the feet of civilian administrators.

Lanctot, meanwhile, roots his narrative in the popular resistance of Francophone habitants in an era that witnessed the peak of the Quebecois sovereignty movement of the twentieth century. Each nonetheless has its own merits, be it their author’s attention to detail, analytical rigor, or grasp of strategy and tactics. But, they also share a relatively

11 Anderson, Battle, 345. 12 Anderson, Battle, 348.

9 narrow focus that precludes a necessary understanding of the 1775 Quebec Campaign’s position within larger contexts.

The American War for Independence

The first and more immediate of these larger contexts is the colonial rebellion in which it took place. Traditional narratives of the American War for Independence often overlook the 1775 Quebec Campaign as a curious sideshow to the main theaters of the conflict.13 Discussions of the first year of the rebellion focus the large majority of their attention on the concurrent siege of Boston under General George Washington.

Explorations of the years after it, meanwhile, follow the course of the war as it unfolded from New York and New Jersey to Philadelphia from 1776 to 1777 and then travel south to the Carolinas in 1780 before edging northward to Virginia in 1781. Such narratives confine themselves almost exclusively to the eastern seaboard of North America (with the brief exception of the in 1777) and offer little space for a place like

Quebec or the peoples that resided within its borders. Absent that place and those peoples, the colonial rebellion can be seen in the flattering terms of a struggle for liberty over tyranny. In the presence of that place and its peoples, those terms seem much less straightforward.

It is by no means a new idea to connect the War for Independence to a wider world. Works like Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s An Empire Divided (on experiences in the West Indies during the war), Janet Polasky’s Revolutions without Borders, and

David K. Allison and Larrie D. Ferreiro’s The American Revolution: A World War have

13 See, for example, Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); John E. Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

10 emphatically demonstrated that the war occurred within a trans-Atlantic and global context.14 Transregional studies like these have shown that the actors, events, and processes that shaped the War for Independence moved forward not just within the confines of the thirteen colonies of eastern North America but across oceans, nations, and lives that existed well beyond their boundaries. The flow and exchange of ideas, goods, and peoples throughout the world over the course of the war had a profound impact on its causes, outcomes, and legacies. Failure to understand that fact represents a failure to understand the war itself.

It is likewise no new idea to position areas and peoples traditionally portrayed as peripheral to the War for Independence in the center of examinations of that conflict.

Indeed, the past several decades have witnessed an exponential growth in the number of studies seeking to decenter traditional narratives in general, not just in studies of the War for Independence but in those of American history overall.15 At this point, an ever- growing number of historians have persuasively argued that doing so provides a necessary corrective for scholarly trends that are too often rooted in a mythologized vision of our nation’s past that excludes marginalized peoples.16 As Kathleen DuVal

14 Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: the American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Janet Polasky, Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); David K. Allison and Larrie D. Ferreiro, eds., The American Revolution: A World War (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2018). 15 See, for example, Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Michael J. Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and Elizabeth A. Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (New York: Hill & Wang Publishing, 2015). 16 See, for example, the contributions to the William and Mary Quarterly’s 2012 forum on the place of American Indians in American history: James H. Merrell, “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 451-512; Andrew Cayton, “Not the Fragments but the Whole,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 513-516; Wendy A. Warren, “More than Words: Language, Colonization, and History,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 517-520; Juliana Barr, “The Red Continent and the Cant of the Coastline,” The William

11 notes in her 2015 Independence Lost, however, “scholarship on the Revolution in particular has been slower to move beyond the thirteen colonies.”17 Studies like DuVal’s

(on experiences along the Gulf Coast during the war), Claudio Saunt’s West of the

Revolution (on events elsewhere in North America in the same period), and Alan Taylor’s

American Revolutions (an overview of continental history throughout the era) have done much to balance the scales in recent years.18 Seen through the lens of such works, the rebellion of thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America becomes not so much an origin story as it does a single event in a much larger, more complex, less easily defined continental world.

This study engages with both of these developments. On the one hand, it examines the campaign’s influence on European decision-making from the dreams of

French noblemen for a return to the glory days before Quebec was lost to the efforts of

British officials to find a place for the province in their empire. In this regard, it engages with works like Marcel Trudel’s La Révolution américaine: pourquoi la France refuse le

Canada, 1775-1783 [The American Revolution: Why France Refused Canada, 1775-

1783] and Philip Lawson’s The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the

American Revolution.19 Both provide valuable insight into Quebec’s place in European

and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 521-526; Michael Witgen, “Rethinking Colonial History as Continental History,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 527-530; Mark Peterson, “Indians and the National Narrative: The Trouble with Words and with Us,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 531-534; James H. Merrell, “Coming to Terms with Early America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 535-540. 17 Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2016), 13. 18 Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015); Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2017). 19 Marcel Trudel, La révolution américaine: Pourquoi La France Refuse Le Canada,1775-1783 (Sillery, QC: Editions du Boréal, 1976); Philip Lawson, The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution (Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014).

12 thinking in the era, the first in reference to French efforts to develop a new concept of imperialism in the absence of massive territorial possessions and the second to Britain’s struggle to find a place for Francophone subjects in a Francophobic empire. What they do not offer, however, is an exploration of how that thinking impacted Quebec’s place in the world of North America.

To span that gap, this study also tracks the actors involved in the 1775 Quebec

Campaign as they took part in the later events of the northern borderlands between

Quebec and the lower thirteen colonies from the 1777 Saratoga Campaign to the

Iroquoian civil war that followed. In that respect it converses most directly with the work of Alan Taylor in The Divided Ground, an analysis of how the war split the northern borderlands in twain, destroyed the Native-centered world of Iroquoia, and replaced it with a national boundary separating British America from the .20 While acknowledging the role of Quebec and its peoples in this narrative, Taylor keeps that role to a relative minimum. By centering the northern province in the story of how the northern borderlands became a boundary, it is possible not only to highlight the pivotal role Quebec’s inhabitants played but the much broader connections between the northern borderlands and the broader continental world of North America. By joining this perspective to my examinations of European thought and action in the same period, I seek to provide a more comprehensive exploration of the rebel invasion of Quebec from

1775 to 1776 and its place in the larger war and world.

20 Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2007).

13 The Colonial Period and the Rise of Nations

I also seek to offer a more in-depth examination of the invasion’s place in the eras that surrounded it, a task that necessitates an engagement with the many studies devoted to situating the War for Independence in a larger chronology. Much of this scholarship has devoted itself to drawing lines between the war and the colonial era that preceded it.21

The war (and the 1775 Quebec Campaign) are thoroughly colonial events. The actors, ideas, and processes that drove both forward found their motivations in the preceding decades. The British colonial rebellion can thus be seen not as a disruption of the preceding era but an extension of it, an event that naturally took place within the context of its own past.

One of the most notable illustrations of this point is the 1786 painting The Death of General Montgomery by George Washington’s former aide-de camp .

The work was a deliberate homage to that of Trumbull’s tutor Benjamin West in The

Death of General Wolfe, a depiction of the British commander’s final moments in the

1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham during his attempt to capture the city of Quebec from the French in the Seven Years’ War. Both show their subjects on center stage, reclining into the arms of their men, surrounded by well-wishers whose awe at the generals’ heroism and sacrifice serves to accentuate the national honor for which they fought. In creating his echo of West’s art, Trumbull not only sought to establish himself as an heir to his tutor’s career but to establish his nation as an heir to the British Empire’s

21 See, for example, Gordon S. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1992); Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999); and T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

14 accomplishments. The message resounded with at least one person. A copy of Trumbull’s painting hung in his former commander’s so-called “New Room” at Mount Vernon.22

The presence of The Death of General Montgomery in the first president’s personal residence also highlights the relationship between the War for Independence and the era that followed, a subject explored at length by historians.23 Trumbull, Washington, and their peers in the United States very much saw their new nation as the natural successor to the British Empire, a purer expression of an ideology lost in the metropole.24

The War for Independence, in their minds, played a central role in making that inheritance possible, setting their nation up for the prophesied glory of a future eminence.

It was not a simple transplantation of British ideas onto North American soil, however, but a filtering of those ideas through the unique experiences of rebel colonists before and during their war to sever ties to the empire.25 The result was a nation at odds with its own image of itself, devoted to notions of liberty that clashed with the realities of violent conquest, exploitation, and bondage. Out of this tension emerged an American conviction that the latter produced the former, that liberty was the just dessert of a superior white race and the rest an equitable punishment for the sin of being otherwise.26

22 Jessie MacLeod, “Furnishing the New Room,” George Washington's Mount Vernon, accessed June 6, 2020, https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/the-mansion/the-new-room/furnishing-the-new- room/. 23 See, for instance, Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: Vintage Books, 1996); Joyce Oldham Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000); and Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008). 24 See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 25 See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969); and Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). 26 See Griffin, American Leviathan; David Waldstreicher, Slavery's Constitution: from Revolution to Ratification (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010); and Parkinson, Common Cause.

15 A telling example of this progression can be found in the experiences of Louis

Cook (Atiatoharongwen), a Native leader from the village of Kahnawake in Quebec.

Cook spent the 1775 Quebec Campaign and the War for Independence as a staunch rebel ally, eventually ascending to the rank of colonel in the Continental Army. In the War of

1812, after leaving Quebec to avoid fighting for the British, Cook was imprisoned by

American military authorities on suspicion of spying for the enemy. His captors doubted both his credentials and claims of wartime service and only released him after fellow officers who knew the truth verified his story. The United States was no place for someone like Cook, a man whose identity and experiences were at odds with the vision most Americans had for their present and future.

Observing that the periods bookending the War for Independence seem to be situated along a continuum of events and processes rather than standing independently, numerous historians have argued for a broader periodization. The exact chronology, of course, depends on the direction each scholar faces in their respective studies. Facing west, from Europe, many have contended that the era is best seen as a “long eighteenth century” or “Second Hundred Years’ War.”27 Tracing events from the Glorious

Revolution that resulted in James II’s deposition in 1688, such authors have observed the rise of a renewed antagonism between Britain and France that promulgated a virulent nationalism in each country and prompted the imperial wars that culminated with the rise of Napoleon. Facing east, from North America, meanwhile, others have suggested the

27 See Frank O'Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688-1832 (: Bloomsbury Academic, 1997); and H. M. Scott, “The Second ‘Hundred Years War’, 1689– 1815,” The Historical Journal 35, no. 2 (June 1992): 443-469.

16 period is better conceptualized as a “Long War for the West” or “Sixty Years’ War.”28

Rooting their narrative in the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, this school of thought follows Native groups as they play off competing imperial interests, become increasingly vulnerable with Britain’s victory over France, and grapple with the extirpative nationalism of the United States over the course of the War of 1812.

Situating itself as it does with Quebec at the center, this study leans more toward the latter than the former. France’s cession of the colony to Britain at the end of the

Seven Years’ War had a profound impact not only on those who resided within Quebec’s borders but on those who interacted with them from without. The experiences that grew from that event shaped historical processes that, tested and forged by the events of the

War for Independence, came to rest in the War of 1812 decades later. This is particularly true of processes of identity formation, the means by which the peoples of Quebec and

North America at large came to separate themselves into nations based on ideas of race and culture. These forces had equally impactful ramifications beyond the shores of the continent, where French and British thinkers and policymakers worked to shape affairs across the Atlantic to their own evolving conceptions of empire and nationhood and in turn drew conclusions from the refusal of those affairs to meet their expectations. The result was a profound change in senses of belonging for peoples that stretched across an ocean and two continents.

28 See François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (June 2008): 647-677; and David Curtis. Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001).

17 Organization

With those processes of identity formation in mind, I have organized my chapters to traverse roughly the same chronological territory from the divergent perspectives of

British, rebel, French, Native, and Quebecois actors. Each begins with the British conquest of Quebec at the tail end of the Seven Years’ War and then progresses through the series of events between then and the outset of the War for Independence, particularly

Pontiac’s War in the 1760s and the passage of the in the 1770s. From there, they proceed to examine the rise and fall of the 1775 Quebec Campaign before moving on the explore the invasion’s consequences in the years of colonial rebellion that followed. Every chapter moves the narrative a little further forward in time as they follow one another. But, I have deliberately restricted the main body of this work by ending it with events that took place during the War for Independence, this being after all a study with the Quebec Campaign and larger colonial rebellion at its core. The epilogue then tracks the processes examined in each chapter to their natural conclusion outside the main chronological focus of the narrative, wending its way through the period following the war and coming to rest in the War of 1812.

The first chapter, from the British perspective, explores the experiences of

Britain’s leaders on both sides of the Atlantic as they sought to identify the best means of incorporating Quebec into their empire after its fall in the Seven Years’ War. From this search emerged two competing visions, both rooted in the virulent Francophobia that defined the emerging British nationalism of the era. On the one hand, metropolitan officials in London believed the best course of action was cultural assimilation, converting the Catholic Quebecois into Protestants and imposing a British political

18 system upon them. On the other, Quebec’s governors (James Murray to 1766 and then

Guy Carleton until 1778) faced the reality of ruling a province in which they were the minority and argued strenuously for imposing order by playing to their new subjects’ perceived affinity for absolute authority.

This stance placed them in deliberate cooperation with the province’s seigneurs and direct competition with Britain’s Indian Department under Sir William Johnson and his successors. Again and again, Murray and Carleton sided with seigneurial traders in the Great Lakes region and trans-Appalachian west in disputes over their treatment of the

Native communities there that Johnson’s department was tasked with pacifying. The jurisdictional struggle this prompted ended in the governors’ favor with the passage of the Quebec Act in 1774, which expanded their province’s borders to encompass both those areas. In passing this legislation, metropolitan officials took Carleton in particular at his word that granting Quebec control of Indian affairs in those areas would firmly attach the seigneurs to Britain’s interests and – by extension – secure the loyalties of the seigneurs’ habitants tenants. The outbreak of the colonial rebellion and subsequent invasion of Quebec by Continental Army forces the following year put Carleton’s words to the test, a test that made clear that Quebecois loyalties were not so easily secured as he had promised. Believing he had, as a result, lost the confidence of his superiors, Carleton resigned his post and departed for Britain in 1778.

The second chapter, from the rebel perspective, follows the Congressional and military leaders of the lower thirteen colonies as they sought to find a place for

Quebecois and Native actors in their vision for a new nation. There were perhaps no

British subjects as enthusiastic in celebrating Quebec’s fall in the Seven Years’ War than

19 the residents of the colonies that rebelled in 1775. France’s agents in the northern province and its borderlands had long wrought terror in the minds and lives of North

America’s Anglophone inhabitants, terror that had bred ideas of cultural and racial superiority that were perhaps even more aggressive than they were in Britain proper. As a result, when rebel leaders came face to face with the perceived necessity of obviating the strategic threat posed by potentially antagonistic populations to their north and west they found themselves reevaluating much of what they had long taken for granted. Out of this moment was born the idea of a continental union, a nation that stretched across North

America and assimilated all peoples within it under the umbrella of a shared homeland and Anglophone culture.

That particular idea in its original inception died almost immediately. The rebels’ efforts to convince their Quebecois and Native neighbors to join their union foundered on the rocks of past colonial behavior and present fiscal insolvency. Francophone and indigenous communities had little reason to trust the residents of colonies that had spent decades seeking to conquer them and were then driven by the financial needs of war against an empire to exploit them further. Officials on the ground like General Philip

Schuyler, commander of the Continental Army’s Northern Department from 1775 to

1777, sought as best they could to implement their superiors’ national vision but ultimately lacked the resources necessary to fund and supply both the invasion of Quebec and diplomacy with Native groups. Their failure translated not only into ramifications for their careers (Schuyler was court-martialed and resigned in 1779) but for the nature of the

United States’ national identity. Faced with Quebecois and Native rejections and their failure to overcome them rebel leaders developed a new continental vision, this time one

20 predicated not on the assimilation of indigenous and Francophone peoples but their annihilation and exclusion instead.

The narrative then turns to the French perspective, examining the blossoming tension between France’s ministry and aristocracy as they debated the best course forward following their defeat in the Seven Years’ War. In the immediate aftermath of

Quebec’s fall, ministerial leaders sought to focus much of their blame away from King

Louis XV and onto the intendant (civil administrator) of the province François Bigot, at whom they leveled multiple charges of corruption in a public trial known as l’Affaire du

Canada [The Canadian Affair]. Although Bigot’s conviction along with numerous other colonial officials allowed the ministry to discharge some of its debts from the Seven

Years’ War by laying them at his feet, the French treasury remained mired in financial difficulties. This reality (unknown outside the ministry) prompted chief minister Étienne

François, duc de Choiseul, to pursue imperial policies that funneled national resources away from territorial acquisition in favor of a military buildup of the woefully outdated

French army and navy. This policy was meant, theoretically, to allow French finances to recover by eschewing the expenditures of vast colonial possessions like Quebec and give

France’s military time to recover from defeat and prepare for the next war with Britain.

Choiseul’s successor Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, pursued the same policy under Louis XVI when that war appeared with the rise of the British colonial rebellion of the 1770s. His decision to do so put the ministry at loggerheads with France’s nobility, whose status was challenged by military reforms emphasizing merit-based advancement and who smarted still from the defeat in North America. Thus, when

Vergennes instructed his representatives among the rebels to discourage efforts to gain

21 Quebec, he found himself stemming a tide of complications from the direction of Marie-

Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette. For Vergennes, Quebec represented a potential drain on the French treasury and a means of keeping the rebels firm in their alliance to France by preserving the British threat to their nation in North

America. For Lafayette, Quebec was a stain on the national honor that could only be wiped clean by its reconquest. Unaware of Vergennes’ thinking, Lafayette enthusiastically agreed to lead a proposed second invasion of Quebec in 1778 and subsequently threatened to sabotage the Franco-rebel alliance after the invasion fell through. While his mentor and commander George Washington was eventually able to assuage the marquis’ wounded pride and save the alliance, it took Vergennes’ intervention to ultimately force him to abandon his hopes of wresting the northern province from Britain’s control.

Lafayette’s abandonment of such hopes forced those of Quebec’s Native inhabitants who had allied themselves to the rebels to do so as well, a topic explored in the fourth chapter. The inhabitants of the Jesuit mission villages along the St. Lawrence

River in the northern province (termed sauvages domicilies [domiciled savages] by the

French) spent much of the period following the Seven Years’ War endeavoring to preserve as much of their previous lives as possible. Their efforts to do so faced complications from multiple sources, chief among them the British Superintendent of

Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson. Hoping to establish his authority among the St.

Lawrence Indians by relying on his preexisting relationship with the

Confederacy of what became western New York, Johnson sought incorporate them into a

Seven Nations Confederacy with the Iroquoian Mohawks of the village of Kahnawake at

22 their head. The Kahnawakes did their best to play upon such efforts to their own advantage, at times embracing Johnson’s vision when it allowed them some preeminence among the St. Lawrence Indians while at others denying it in order to fend off Iroquoian attempts to control them. This back and forth continued after Johnson’s death in 1774 and played a role in shaping the actions of many St. Lawrence Indians when the colonial rebellion broke out the following year. So too did the relationships the indigenous communities of Quebec shared with Native alliances beyond Iroquoia, among them the

Hurons of the Great Lakes region and the Wabanaki Confederacy north of New England.

Indeed, these relationships were particularly important in molding the reactions of the various St. Lawrence Indian communities to the rebel invasion of Quebec in 1775.

Support for the rebellion depended much on local circumstances, each village’s relationships to the larger world of the borderlands helping to determine how well- received the rebels’ offers of alliance turned out to be. In Kahnawake, with its well- established ties to the rebel-leaning Oneidas of Iroquoia, the rebellion found considerable favor and Louis Cook eventually emerged as the most prominent figure in an anti-British confederacy composed of the Kahnawakes, Oneidas, and Iroquoian Tuscaroras. The

Abenaki village of Odanak, meanwhile, had ties to both camps as members of the

Wabanaki Confederacy, which though leaning in the direction of the rebel colonists in the

War for Independence had spent much of the colonial period at war with them. Among them Joseph-Louis Gill (Magouaouidombaouit) proved most open to rebel offers of alliance, hoping he might with rebel support gain the advantage in his long struggle for power over the elders of the village council. Among the Hurons of Wendake, a small village in close proximity to British officials in the city of Quebec, the rebels found little

23 support, a situation exacerbated further by the efforts of the British-leaning Hurons of the

Great Lakes to exert pressure over the Wendakes in Britain’s favor. Still, some like Louis

Vincent (Sawatanen) had preexisting ties to rebel colonists and went against the tide.

They (like most of the rebel-leaning St. Lawrence Indians) eventually came back into the fold, however. Ultimately, the realization that France had little interest in returning to their lives forced them to come to terms with Britain once and for all.

While some among the St. Lawrence Indians held out hope until late in the war that the French might return in force to Quebec it would appear that few of their

Quebecois neighbors did likewise, a topic of discussion in the fifth chapter. Though a clause in the 1763 Treaty of Paris allowed for the residents of Quebec to exchange life in their home province for one in the metropole, relatively few took the opportunity to do so. Those that did, primarily seigneurs with strong ties to France, encountered a French ministry less than willing to accommodate their needs and a British one more than happy to welcome them back home if given the chance. Upon their return, these momentary emigres found themselves wooed as the object of British hopes for ruling the province.

Members of the provincial elite like Luc de la Corne (commonly known as Saint Luc) soon became the epicenter of a collaborative effort to impose British authority upon

Quebec’s lower classes via the conduit of seigneurs’ influence as landlords to the habitants. This coalition between the seigneurs and British officials governed the province by means of a gubernatorial council, a system that soon faced opposition from those favored a shift to rule by an elected assembly. This opposition (an alliance between

French Protestants like and recent immigrants from the lower thirteen colonies like Thomas Walker of Massachusetts) experienced its greatest setback with the

24 passage of the 1774 Quebec Act. One of the act’s primary mechanisms was the establishment of the governor’s council as the sole means of ruling the province.

The outbreak of the colonial rebellion the following year brought the political tension of the preceding decade to new heights, giving both council and assembly supporters new opportunities to advance their cause. The widespread refusal of the habitants to muster in defense of Quebec when the rebel invasion began served as evidence for the assembly party that the governor’s council had been unable despite its best efforts to secure that class’s loyalty to the empire. The choice of some prominent assembly party members like Thomas Walker to ultimately embrace the rebellion, meanwhile, gave council party supporters the chance to claim their enemies were disloyal and even treasonous. Others, like Pierre du Calvet or recent immigrant to Quebec Moses

Hazen, found themselves pushed into a conflict they had sought to avoid. For Hazen, the coming of war to the province meant abandoning life as he knew it, accepting command of a regiment of Quebecois soldiers in the Continental Army, and eventually coming to terms with an exile not of his own choosing. For Calvet it meant continuing life in

Quebec under constant suspicion from British authorities, who ultimately chose to imprison him. It was only the entrance of thousands of Loyalist refugees to the province from the lower thirteen colonies at the close of the war that prompted Calvet’s release, his compatriots in the assembly party having found new allies (and thus more influence) in a group of people who had spent their lives under the rule of elected officials.

That group would continue to have a profound impact on Quebec’s politics as time went on, one of the subjects of discussion in the epilogue. Under the auspices of their presence in the northern province, the assembly party in Quebec gained new vigor

25 and momentum. Eventually this momentum would culminate with the passage of the

Constitutional Act in 1791, legislation that divided the northern province in half along cultural lines. One half would remain under the rule of a governor’s council and be governed by French law, the other would elect an assembly and follow British legal custom. Thus, the French and Anglophone inhabitants of Quebec were divided along cultural lines and the groundwork was laid for a Quebecois identity rooted in difference.

For metropolitan officials, however, it was only a temporary means to their ends. They insisted that the French half of Quebec would one day be convinced to adopt a British political system. The nearly three decades of debate over how best to rule Quebec had, ultimately, resulted in a return to the metropolitan vision for the province. Quebec and its

Francophone inhabitants would find their place in the empire through assimilation, not accommodation as its governors James Murray and Guy Carleton had suggested.

The Quebecois were not the only ones who found themselves separated from others along cultural lines. The Native communities of North America faced a growing conviction among the leaders and citizens of the new United States that their continent should be free of racial admixture. Born in the efforts of rebel leaders to incorporate

Indians into their union during the War for Independence, this conviction translated into a series of land cession treaties that pushed Native communities out of their traditional homelands. Some, particularly among the Iroquois, chose to relocate to Quebec, where their presence along with the Loyalists prompted new challenges as they sought to create a new home safe from the threat of colonial expansion. As their efforts continued, new boundaries arose that divided Quebec, the northern borderlands, and the larger world into increasingly static conceptions of race and culture. The result was the rise of aggressive

26 new group identities that sought to shield those who embraced them from the coming storms. Among those storms was the War of 1812, a conflict which gave such identities even greater cohesion and meaning.

A Note on Terminology and Sources

Before proceeding to this narrative, however, it is necessary to make a quick note about some of the terminological and source choices I have made in this study. Generally speaking, I have as much as possible referred to place names according to the usage made by their inhabitants rather than translating them into English. Thus, French names are used for Quebecois communities and Native names for indigenous ones. I have, though, chosen to refer to Native individuals from the St. Lawrence Indian villages by their

European names, those being the labels they adopted upon their baptism as Catholics. For such individuals, the Catholic faith was a central part of life and (though neither immutable nor immovable) important enough to motivate their frequent use of European names in both Native and colonial societies. Finally, I have deliberately avoided use of the terms Canadian and American, those being national identities that were largely formed as a result of the events that took place in the period under study. Thus, while historical actors frequently used such terms, they did not have the same meanings by which we might recognize them today. So, I have instead referred to the Francophone inhabitants of Quebec as the Quebecois and the Anglophone inhabitants of the lower thirteen colonies in rebellion against Britain as the rebels. It would not be until those two groups found themselves embroiled in a northern invasion for one final time in the War of 1812 that the identities we know as American and Canadian became something akin to their more recognizable forms.

27 In terms of sources, my conceptualization of this project has necessitated considerable archival exploration in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and

France. In total, I visited the Society of the Cincinnati, John Carter Brown Library, John

Hay Library, New York Public Library, American Antiquarian Society, Houghton

Library, West Virginia & Regional History Center, Library of Congress, National

Archives and Records Administration, Library and Archives Canada, National Archives of the United Kingdom, and the Bibliothèque national de France. I have made a deliberate effort, however, to rely as much as possible upon source material that potential readers might be able to gain ready access to as long as that material is not contradicted by a critical mass of archival findings. This effort is predicated upon my conviction that it behooves historians to engage with readers on a level playing field as historical interpreters with equal right to their own interpretation based on an informed analysis of source material. Using material from published volumes and digital collections will thus serve as a bridge between my work as a member of an isolated academic community and the broader public at large.

This means that, whenever possible, sources that are easily available through public library systems, online retailers, and Internet databases have served as the foundation of my research. In particular, I have utilized online resources like Google

Books, the Internet Archive, the edition of Peter Force’s American Archives available through the Northern Illinois University Historical Digitization Projects, the Frederick

Haldimand and Daniel Claus papers available through the Canadiana project, and the many resources that have been digitized by the Archives nationales de France on Gallica.

Likewise, I have obtained and utilized individual volumes of primary source collections

28 like Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, A History of the

Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada,

Stanley Idzerda’s Lafayette in the Age of the American War for Independence, Early

American Indian Documents, and Maryly Penrose’s Indian Affairs Papers. In part, this is a simple product of the advent of the digital age. Primary and secondary sources are more readily available than they have ever been in the past. More importantly, however, the use of such resources allows any potential reader to find the sources used in a work of scholarship, engage with them as they see fit, and weigh a scholar’s conclusions for themselves. This potential represents an important development in the democratization of knowledge and I believe that we as scholars have a responsibility to encourage it.

29 Chapter 1: Surrounded by Conquests: Governing Quebec and the Borderlands,

1760-1778

When France ceded control of Quebec and its other North American holdings to

Great Britain after the Seven Years’ War, many in Britain proper hailed the moment as the nascence of British global hegemony.1 For British officials and colonists in North

America, however, the aftermath of that cession was somewhat less triumphal. Instead, they faced the reality of governing an empire that existed more in maps and minds than it did on stone and soil.2 It was a reality for which, those officials and colonists found, metropolitan ministers seemed to have little time. When the Superintendent for Indian

Affairs in the Northern Colonies Sir William Johnson sent his agent George Croghan to

London in 1764 in order to ascertain the scope of his superintendency’s powers in the empire’s new territories, for example, he found that his superiors in Britain had other priorities. Croghan wiled away weeks in the capital waiting for Johnson’s concerns to be addressed and, the longer he spent in the metropole, the more convinced he became that the ministry had no intention of attending to American affairs at all. As that conviction grew, so too did his disillusionment with the metropole itself. “They are Greatt Indian

Politicions & pretend to know as Much of Indian affairs as you Do,” he wrote in a letter

1 George Henry Lee, the 3rd Earl of Litchfield, for example, sponsored a poetry contest at Oxford University commemorating the 1759 British victory at the a decade later, in which the top three prizes went to authors who lauded their nation’s triumph in terms that elevated the British commander James Wolfe to almost divine proportions. See Middleton Howard, “The Conquest of Quebec: A Poem” (Oxford: James Fletcher, 1769), The John Carter Brown Library (JCB) (D768 H851c), Brown University, Providence, RI.; William Cooke, “The Conquest of Quebec: A Poem” (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1769), JCB (D768 C948c); and Joseph Hazard, “The Conquest of Quebec: A Poem” (Oxford: James Fletcher, 1769), JCB (D768 H428c). 2 See Michael J. Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

30 to Johnson on July 12, but really they “are Imensly Ignerant and as Indiferent about itt.”3

“I am Sick of London,” he confided to Johnson in another letter, and “hartilly Tierd. of ye. pride & pompe of the Slaves in power hear which are to be pitied tho they Dont

Deserve itt.”4 A little over a decade later, Croghan made his resentment towards London abundantly clear. In May of 1775, shortly after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he assumed the chairmanship of Pittsburgh’s Committee of Correspondence.5 For Croghan, at least, the rebellion had deep roots.

While Croghan may have been able to make his discontent known in 1775, however, his superior Sir William Johnson, fiercely loyal to the empire, faced the consequences of metropolitan inaction with considerably less defiance. In 1764, Johnson made do with the limited means at his disposal. Because the affairs of Quebec so often intersected with those of the borderlands during the period, Johnson’s efforts set in motion a struggle for control over the institutions created to govern the empire’s new territorial acquisitions that culminated over a decade later during the American War for

Independence. On one side of this struggle stood Johnson and his agents, determined to do everything in their power to avoid conflict with indigenous communities while recruiting them as a bulwark against France and Spain should imperial competition for the continent reignite. On the other side were the governors of the newly minted province of Quebec, General James Murray and his successor Guy Carleton, surrounded by thousands of new imperial subjects who spoke a different language and practiced a

3 George Croghan to William Johnson, July 12, 1764, in William Johnson, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-1965), 4:464. 4 George Croghan to William Johnson, April 14, 1764, in Sullivan, ed., 4:399. 5 Jeffrey Michael Zimmerman, ""All the Nations to the Sun Setting": George Croghan, Extending the Limits of Empire in " (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2015), 335.

31 religion they considered antithetical to their own. Above them, metropolitan officials in

Britain proper grappled with the challenges of developing a uniform set of policies to govern a disparate collection of colonial provinces from thousands of miles away.

Meanwhile, the French-speaking tenant farmers of Quebec (habitants) and their landlords

(seigneurs) fought to shape their society in what they saw as their own best interests, the former striving for an expanded voice in a changing political landscape and the latter for continued dominance over their province’s politics and economy. Finally, the indigenous communities of Quebec and the Great Lakes region confronted the challenges of preserving their sovereignty in the face of mounting pressures from colonial neighbors intent upon profiting from that sovereignty’s destabilization.

Each of these group’s efforts had profound implications for British Indian affairs.

They also eventually helped to determine the role of Quebec in not only the triumphant empire that reigned after 1763, but the disintegrating one that remained twenty years later. The jurisdictional contest between the Indian Department and the governors of

Quebec over borderlands trade and Indian affairs in the decade after the conquest of the province continued to resonate during the American War for Independence. In the very first year of the war, the course of events tested, stretched, and sometimes broke indigenous and Quebecois attachments to the empire as rebel forces flooded the province of Quebec. The outcome of those tests was determined not in the moment, but by lessons learned in the previous decade. So, provincial officials who had spent years assuring their superiors in London that the key to establishing imperial authority in the province lay in the enrichment of its former ruling class watched helplessly as Quebec’s habitants majority consequently refused to muster in the colony’s defense. At the same time, a

32 decade of interference in indigenous affairs by those same provincial officials, so that their seigneurial allies could profit from borderlands trade and land development, frustrated the efforts of Indian Department agents seeking to wield increasingly alienated

Native forces against the rebel invaders. All the while, the British ministry in London struggled to make sense of a conflict that threatened to tear apart not only its province, but its empire, a conflict in which unresolved jurisdictional disputes could translate into a massive loss of life and lands.6

Numerous historians have identified Indian affairs as central to determining the success or failure of imperial goals after the Seven Years’ War, and many have even extended their explorations of the topic into the period during and after the American

War for Independence. In his 1991 book, The Middle Ground, for example, Richard

White argues that the British Empire, like its French predecessor, rose and fell on the abilities of its agents to foster a diplomatic arena with Native leaders based on mutual understanding (the eponymous “middle ground”).7 When that understanding broke down, he contends, so too did the empire itself. Michael McConnell similarly emphasizes the empire’s fragility at the hands of the Native peoples it claimed to rule in his book A

Country Between, published the year after White’s Middle Ground was released. Unable to impose their vision of order on Native communities, he writes, “imperialists conceded their inability to transform de jure control” over the borderlands “into de facto authority”

6 Multiple scholars have examined the extent to which legal conceptions of jurisdiction in the era rested on and impacted ideological disputes within the British Empire. See, in particular, Daniel Joseph Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664- 1830 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Hannah Weiss Muller, Subjects and Sovereign: Bonds of Belonging in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 7 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650- 1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

33 over Indians and instead resorted to a “fragile, symbiotic relationship” that spelled the end of British dreams for North American supremacy.8 Fifteen years later, in his 2007 book American Leviathan, Patrick Griffin would characterize the situation in even starker terms. “The beginning of the end for British Empire in America occurred not in Boston or

Philadelphia,” he writes, but “on the . . . frontier.”9 “Without the deference of subjects” and the “good faith of Indians in the West,” he maintains, officials “confronted a crisis of empire” that they “seemed unable” to resolve.10 Griffin’s work, like that of White and

McConnell, do much to lay bare the nature of the British Empire and its limits in the period immediately following the conquest of Quebec. Each, however, locates its geographic focus outside the bounds of that province: White, on the pays d’en haut

(Upper Country, or Great Lakes Region); McConnell, on the Country; and Griffin on the Pennsylvania borderlands.11 I contend, on the other hand, that events in those areas can be more fully understood by taking the role of Quebec, its people, and their governors into consideration (and vice versa).

The studies that do focus on Quebec’s role in the empire are similarly limited, but in chronological, rather than geographic, terms. The most prominent scholarship in this area has focused primarily on the heavy influx of colonial Loyalists to the northern

8 Michael Norman McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724- 1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 4. 9 Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 110. 10 Griffin, American Leviathan, 107. 11 These works are by no means the only major studies on the subject. Gregory Dowd’s examination of Pontiac’s War, War under Heaven, has been no less impactful to the field. While acknowledging the role of British imperial policies in the conflict, however, the study is nonetheless limited geographically primarily to the Great Lakes and Ohio Countries. Colin Calloway’s exploration of the aftermath of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, The Scratch of a Pen, presents a much broader perspective but focuses little attention on the conquest’s impact on the inhabitants of Quebec itself. See Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven Pontiac, the Indian Nations, & the British Empire (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2004) and Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

34 province in the wake of Britain’s withdrawal from the United States in 1783. In fact, their settlement in Quebec after the American War for Independence is considered a fundamental turning point in the history of the British Empire and Canada. According to

Maya Jasanoff in her 2011 book Liberty’s Exiles, this entrance played a profound role in determining the success of British attempts to redefine the nature of empire in the wake of the United States’ independence.12 Indeed, she argues, Loyalist refugees were instrumental in defining and expanding an imperial vision that would ultimately find one of its most famous expressions in the establishment of the Canadian Confederation in

1867. In this process, which Jasanoff terms the “spirit of 1783,” Loyalists eventually came to conceive of the empire as a multiethnic confederation rather than a unified hierarchy of core and periphery.13 This confederation, they believed, should be administrated by a system of semi-autonomous local governments that were overseen by a centralized metropolitan bureaucracy dedicated to the defense of political liberties through a paternalist humanitarian ethos.

Still, while doing much to document the role of Quebec in the British Empire,

Jasanoff does little to explore the roots of that role as they developed over the course of the preceding two decades. Without doing so, any comprehension of that role is incomplete. During that earlier period, colonial officials, Indians, and new French- speaking British subjects across the northern- and westernmost reaches of nominal imperial territory worked to negotiate their respective places within an empire that never quite seemed to know its place in their lives. Many of those negotiations were woven

12 Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). 13 See, in particular, Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles, 5-20.

35 through with the preconceptions of earlier eras, be they social, cultural, or ethnic. By the time the American War for Independence began, and the rebel army invaded Quebec, those preconceptions had hardened into presumed facts. The combatants involved in that invasion (and the war more generally), be they Loyalist, rebel, Quebecois, or Native, chose their sides and formulated their expectations regarding those choices based on their understanding of those “facts” and the period of time in which they had learned them. In essence, the centrality of the north and west to determining the nature of the British

Empire ensured that those areas would be central to the war that broke the empire apart.

Meanwhile, the actions of the inhabitants of those regions during the war were largely informed by the efforts of imperial officials to resolve the question of the empire’s nature for themselves in the preceding decade. The result was a deepening of the divisions both figurative and physical that came to define the era and, ultimately, ensured that the empire that reigned in Quebec after France’s defeat in 1759 bore little resemblance to the one that reigned after its own defeat in 1781.

The Quebecois in Pontiac’s War

This process began with the outbreak of hostilities between Native and British fighters in the Great Lakes region in 1763. The ensuing conflict came to be known as

Pontiac’s War after an Ottawa leader named Obwandiyag, or Pontiac, whom colonial officials believed to be the leader of indigenous forces. Johnson was central to the empire’s efforts to combat those forces. Given his experience in the French and Indian

Wars, it was perhaps natural that one of his first proposals for dealing with the Native combatants in the Great Lakes region involved the Quebecois, erstwhile allies of the

Great Lakes Indians. In pursuing that proposal, Johnson effectively set in motion the

36 series of power struggles that came to characterize his relationship with Quebec’s governors over the course of the following decade.

Those struggles began in November 1763 with a letter from Johnson to General

Thomas Gage, Commander of British Forces in North America, regarding the potential use of Quebecois militias in Pontiac’s War. Any expeditions sent against the Indians,

Johnson wrote to Gage, should be “accompanied by some Canadians.” “I am of opinion nothing can appear more necessary,” he told the general, for it “will have the good effect of Lessening their interest, in the Inds.” and “prevent their being regarded for the future, in the light of Friends as they are now considered.”14 The presence of Quebecois soldiers in the British expeditions might thus, Johnson believed, convince the Indians that French forces would not be returning to the continent any time soon. Rumors of such a return had begun almost immediately upon the fall of Quebec in 1759, and Johnson had received reports that those rumors had in some areas convinced wavering indigenous leaders to support the war against the British.15 Therefore, achieving this end was of paramount concern for Johnson. According to Johnson, however, including Quebecois in the expeditions might have a further salutary effect. Namely, it would force the

Quebecois and Indians to face each other in combat, potentially damaging a relationship that remained as a holdover from the period of the French and Indian Wars. In the process, Johnson hoped, the Quebecois and Indians could be neutralized as a joint threat to the survival of the British Empire in the north and west.

14 William Johnson to , November 23, 1763, in Sullivan, ed., 4:253. 15 See Gregory Evans Dowd, Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).

37 This was, evidently, an idea of which Gage approved. By February of 1764, he was working to put Johnson’s plan in motion, writing to Governor Murray of Quebec with instructions to summon the province’s militia for service. “Nothing can so effectually serve, to convince the savages, how vain and erroneous their expectations have been of French Supplys,” he wrote, “than their seeing a Body of Canadians in Arms, and ready to act Hostilye against them.” “I [therefore] think proper,” he told Murray, “to require an Aid from the Province of Quebec, of One Battalion of Three Hundred Men.”16

As Murray would make clear in his next missive to Gage, however, he did not share his superior’s opinion of the request’s propriety.

Murray, like many colonial officials after the Seven Years’ War, faced less than ideal conditions for governance. For Johnson and Gage, those conditions included the conflict with the Indians in the Great Lakes region and, eventually, Murray himself.

Murray, on the other hand, confronted issues of a more numerical nature. The military forces with which his superiors expected him to administer his corner of the empire were vastly outnumbered by a Quebecois population somewhere in the region of one hundred thousand Relying as he did on extended Atlantic supply lines that had often proven slow to respond to imperial crises, Murray was in no position to force Quebecois obedience to

Gage’s commands. Murray chose instead to appeal to Quebecois sensibilities without compromising his position as a representative of the British Empire.

Murray was exceedingly wary of Gage’s proposal given how vulnerable his position in Quebec seemed at the time. What was most important, he told his superior,

16 Thomas Gage to James Murray, February 12, 1764, in Ernest Cruikshank, ed., A History of the Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada: From the Peace of Paris in 1763, to the Present Time. With Illustrative Documents, 3 vols. (Ottawa: Canadian Government, 1919-1920), 1:54.

38 was that any attempt to utilize the Quebecois militia be done with the consent of the

Quebecois themselves. “To Oblige a Body of Canadians in their present Circumstances to march against the Savages, out of the Province, is not to be attempted,” for it “might be

Construed an attempt” to exile them from the province. Instead, he continued, “the Corps of Canadians in question” should be “volunteers commanded by their Own

Countrymen.”17 Murray sought to walk a very thin line with this compromise. He could no more defy his superior’s orders than he could alienate the empire’s new subjects in

Quebec. Many of those new subjects would balk at being ordered from their homes and sent on campaign hundreds of miles away at the behest of their recent conquerors. But, if

Gage wanted Quebecois militiamen to accompany Johnson’s expeditions, he would get them. So, Murray, like Johnson, made do with what he had in light of superiors that had other priorities besides his own.

Unfortunately for Murray, what he had turned out to be very little, and he eventually realized that his expectations of facing little difficulty in raising a body of

Quebecois volunteers were less than well founded. In letters to General Ralph Burton, commander at Montreal, in March and April of 1764, he expressed his frustration at the challenges of raising the troops Gage had requested. “I shall with difficulty, be able to

Compleat our two Companys,” he informed Burton, for “latterly the people got it into their heads, that by taking money, and Voluntary inlisting, they were lyable to remain

Soldiers while they lived.”18 “It has been a strange Business, I fear but ill Considered by

Mr. Gage,” he complained, but the “whole Transaction shall be laid before the King, and

17 James Murray to Thomas Gage, March 5, 1764, in Cruikshank, ed., 1:57. 18 James Murray to Ralph Burton, March 22, 1764, in Cruikshank, ed., 1:73.

39 I hope for the future we shall never be put to such a Dilemma.”19 Apparently he had become convinced of the need to assert the empire’s will more forcefully. In less than a year, his efforts to do so would place him once more at odds with Sir William Johnson and his Indian department.

Still, Murray no doubt believed that he was little to blame for his growing rift with Johnson. He was, after all, simply acting according to the instructions he had received upon his appointment as governor of Quebec. Article 60 of those instructions made plain that Murray was responsible for conducting Indian affairs in his province.

“You are . . . to appoint a proper Person or Persons to assemble, and treat with the said

Indians,” his superiors instructed, “so that they may be induced by Degrees, not only to be good Neighbours to Our Subjects, but likewise themselves to become good Subjects to

Us.”20 The eventual incorporation of Indians into the empire as British subjects had long been a metropolitan goal.21 What seemed unclear, however, was who exactly was meant to be responsible for achieving this end. According to Murray’s instructions, the task was to be left to provincial governors such as himself. According to Johnson, however, those instructions conflicted with the ones he himself had received several months prior.

So sure was Johnson of his own role in achieving metropolitan aims that when

Murray informed him that he had appointed Captain John Campbell of the 27th Regiment as his Indian agent in Quebec, he responded more with confusion than anger.22 “Last

Autumn, I received a Letter from the Lords of trade . . . in which they confirm all my

19 James Murray to Ralph Burton, April 2, 1764, in Cruikshank, ed., 1:79. 20 “Murray’s Instructions as Governor,” in Adam Shortt and Arthur George Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, 2 vols. (Ottawa: Printed by J. De L. Taché, 1918), 1:199. 21 See Griffin, American Leviathan, 19-45. 22 James Murray to William Johnson, March 2, 1765, in Sullivan, ed., 11:615.

40 Deputies” and include “all the Northern Colonies, with Canada” in “my Department,” he informed Murray in a letter on May 28. “I am . . . at a loss” for “what to do, until I hear from England,” he told Murray, but “I cannot consistently relinquish that part of my

District until his Majesty’s pleasure is known.”23 Once more, the uncertainty of metropolitan intentions had caused confusion in the colonies, and until that uncertainty was resolved, colonial officials would have to shift for themselves. For Johnson, that would mean another decade of negotiation and struggle. Murray, however, would be relieved of that struggle in a much shorter period of time. By the next year, Murray had been recalled to London.

Murray’s Dismissal

Ultimately, Murray’s fall in 1766 came not at the hands of Johnson, or the

Quebecois, but from the British subjects that had begun trickling into Quebec ever since its conquest. Seeking to tap into new markets in the borderlands that had long been inaccessible to British traders during the French and Indian Wars, the “old subjects,” as they were often termed, became a substantial minority in Quebec within only a few short years. Yet they were still a minority, and Murray soon proved himself more concerned with keeping peace among the empire’s new subjects than among the old ones. To do so,

Murray chose to ally himself with the provincial elites, known as seigneurs for their large seigneurial estates, upon which the large majority of Quebecois farmers (habitants) lived as tenants in semi-feudal fashion.24 During the period of French rule in Quebec, the seigneurs had served as militia officers, administrators of justice, and councilmembers.

23 William Johnson to James Murray, May 28, 1765, in Sullivan, ed., 11:756. 24 See Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes, 1740- 1840 (Toronto: Press, 1985).

41 They thus, in theory at least, knew the inner workings of Quebec better than any others, and their support could therefore be invaluable in Murray’s efforts to govern the province. Indeed, with their assistance, he hoped, the Quebecois might become prosperous and contributing members of the empire, rather than a conquered people. It was just such a strategy that came to define British imperialism in the decades after the

American War for Independence.25 In 1764, however, it seemed to cause Murray nothing but trouble, stirring resentment among the empire’s old subjects that Murray and the military officers that served under him showed preference to the empire’s new subjects by allowing – even encouraging – them to continue dominating the Indian trade.

Those resentments boiled over in what became known as the Walker affair, a series of clashes between the British merchant Thomas Walker of Montreal and a group of British officers and Quebecois seigneurs and traders. Though Walker was notoriously confrontational, he also held considerable sway amongst the empire’s old subjects, and

Murray evidently believed that he might serve as a valuable ally in stemming the rising tensions between the province’s French- and British-speaking subjects. So, shortly after his own appointment as governor, Murray issued an appointment to Walker as a justice of the peace for Montreal. By the end of the year, however, it had become clear that Walker was, if anything, doing his utmost to encourage the very tensions he had been appointed to ease. Under Walker’s aegis, the main bone of contention between the French- and

British-speaking residents of Montreal became the billeting of soldiers in local homes, which Walker opposed (even going so far as to arrest Captain Benjamin Charnock Payne of the 28th Foot for refusing to leave the lodgings he occupied). In response, Murray

25 See Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500- c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

42 summoned Walker to Quebec to explain his actions. But, shortly before the date he was due in Quebec, six masked men broke into Walker’s home, beat him, cut off a part of one of his ears, and left him for dead. Four men from the 28th Regiment were arrested and tried in but, because Walker refused to travel to the capital to testify, the men were acquitted. Two subsequent trials over the incident ended with the same result.

Each time, Walker leveled his accusations at new defendants (among them Saint-Luc de la Corne, father-in-law to John Campbell, Murray’s chosen Indian agent). Walker’s inability to obtain what he saw as justice bred a long-simmering resentment in the British merchant. That resentment found its outlet in 1775, when rebel forces invaded the province and Walker became one of the rebellion’s staunchest partisans in Quebec. Like

George Croghan, the rebellion ran deep for Thomas Walker.

In the decade before, however, Walker could at least take solace in the fact that his peers among the British merchant class shared his outrage. News of the Walker affair reached London just as Murray’s superiors in the metropole were considering a petition from the British merchants of Quebec asking for his removal as governor. Under

Murray’s rule, the petitioners claimed, the situation in Quebec had become nearly untenable. “To military Government however oppressive and severely felt, we submitted without murmurs,” they began, “hoping Time with a Civil Establishment would remedy the Evil.” But rather than establish a civil government, they wrote, Murray had “enact[ed]

Ordinances” that were “vexatious, oppressive, unconstitutional, injurious to civil Liberty and the Protestant cause.”26 By relying on military officers and Quebecois elites to govern the province, then, Murray had, according to his opposition in the province,

26 “Petition of British Merchants of Quebec,” in Douglas Brymner, Report on Canadian Archives (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1888), 14-15.

43 violated fundamental tenets of British imperialism. Those tenets were, namely, that the empire and its subjects were meant to be Protestant and governed by a parliamentary system.

Murray’s enemies in Quebec were by no means the only such subjects of the empire to think in this manner. According to historian Linda Colley, this belief was rooted in a sense of national identity that was in many ways predicated upon a “strong sense of dissimilarity from those without,” particularly Catholic France.27 Over the course of the decades following the Act of Union in 1707 that united the crowns of

Scotland and England under the Hanoverian King George I, Great Britain became increasingly involved in affairs throughout Europe and overseas, especially in conflicts with its centuries old French enemy. Through such conflicts, the subjects of the recently united regions of Britain began in some places – particularly England – to develop a collective pride in their national institutions (like the Anglican Church) and political ideas

(like the liberty and virtue espoused by Parliamentary Whigs). This pride was fed by an almost universal scorn for French institutions and ideas, a scorn that allowed Britons to

“contrive for themselves a converse and flattering identity” rooted in their “imagining

[of] the French as their vile opposites.” In this imagining, the Catholic French “wallowed in superstition” and “were oppressed by a bloated army and by absolute monarchy,” while Britons “enjoy[ed] true religion” and “were manifestly free.”28 As a result, the

British nation positioned itself in the eighteenth century as the ultimate defender of

Protestant liberty against the Catholic tyranny of nations like France.

27 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3. 28 Colley, Britons, 376.

44 Murray’s choice to ally himself with the Catholic, French-speaking seigneurial class in Quebec thus went very much against the grain of the majority opinion across the empire, and especially in the metropole. His alienation of the British subjects living in his province did little to add luster to his reputation at home either. So, when the petition from the British merchants of Quebec was presented in tandem with a petition from those merchants’ trading partners in London similarly calling for Murray’s removal from office, the outcome was a fait accompli. The merchants of London, after all, were among the most powerful lobbies in the imperial capital, while Murray was, in metropolitan minds, the governor of a colonial backwater from which the empire had yet to benefit either politically or commercially. On June 28, 1766, Murray sailed for home, and his opponents rejoiced.

Murray’s allies, the seigneurs, however, did not. In a petition to the king after

Murray’s exit from the province, the seigneurial elite of Quebec protested the governor’s removal as a measure designed to destroy their lives and livelihoods. “The Seigniors in the District of Quebec, as well in their own names as in those of all the inhabitants, their tenants” are “penetrated with grief at the departure of His Excellency, the Hon. James

Murray,” they informed their new sovereign, for “they have since the conquest of this

Province loved and respected” him. After all, they continued, “in 1759” when he was

“surrounded by Canadians, whom he must have regarded as his enemies,” he “had only indulgence for them” and “from that time he gained our hearts.” We are “accustomed to respect our superiors and to obey the orders issued by our Sovereign,” they wrote, “to which we were led by our education as much as our religion.”29 Playing as they did to

29 “Petition of Seigneurs to the King,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:105-6.

45 British notions of French subjects’ innate tendency toward subjugation, then, the seigneurs evidently hoped their words might convince metropolitan officials that they, and not the empire’s old subjects, would most loyally uphold imperial rule in Quebec.

Written as it was in the midst of massive colonial resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act imposing duties on paper goods entering the colonies, the seigneurs no doubt expected their petition’s depiction of the old subjects’ agitation in the province to carry more weight than it might have otherwise. Regardless, they would soon come to appreciate

Murray’s successor, Guy Carleton, in much the same terms as their erstwhile governor.

The Problem with Quebecois Traders

Sir William Johnson’s feelings toward Carleton, were, on the other hand, something short of appreciative. By the time of Carleton’s appointment as governor of

Quebec, Johnson had been engaged in a battle of wits with Quebecois traders for several years. Indeed, he had had difficulty controlling said traders almost since the beginning of their incorporation into the empire. By 1765, Johnson was convinced that the Quebecois were intent upon doing everything in their power to weaken the empire.30 In the immediate aftermath of Quebec’s conquest, Johnson opposed the decision of General

Jeffrey Amherst to restrict the Indian trade for fear of causing the exact resentments that boiled over into Pontiac’s War. During that conflict, however, he had seen no other alternative but to order further restrictions on trade with Indians (particularly in guns) in an effort to force the indigenous communities of the Great Lakes region to sue for peace.

Afterwards, he confined that trade to borderlands outposts, where any commerce that took place could be supervised by British army officers and Indian agents. His hope was

30 William Johnson to Thomas Gage, August 28, 1765, in Sullivan, ed., 11:915.

46 that by such measures he might prevent merchants within the empire (French- and

English-speaking alike) from taking advantage of their Native trading partners. The abuses European traders had committed against the Indians with which they dealt had been, after all, a chief complaint leading up to the indigenous attacks against the British in 1763-64.

The traders of Quebec, however, had long been accustomed to spending the winter in indigenous communities. By doing so, they avoided having to travel via rivers and paths that were made nearly impassible by snow and ice every year. Many traders married into these communities to and built large, extended families.31 So, when Johnson attempted to limit their trade to the outposts, they were, to say the least, none too pleased, and they did everything they could to show it. Over the next few years, they flooded the offices of Johnson and other officials with petitions and complaints against his policies.32

When that did not work, they levelled accusation after accusation against his representatives at borderlands outposts, accusing them of countless acts of abuse and corruption.33 Eventually, some simply ignored Johnson’s orders, and travelled to Native communities to trade in open defiance of the empire’s Indian department.34

Murray had been of little help to Johnson in this matter, but Carleton was hardly better. In the first few months of Carleton’s reign as governor of Quebec, Johnson still retained some hope for the possibility of a better working relationship than the one he had had with Murray. In light of that hope, he sent a letter to Carleton in January of 1767

31 See White, Middle Ground. 32 “Montreal Merchants to Murray,” March 30, 1766, in Sullivan, ed., 5:131-33; “Montreal Merchants to Johnson,” April 15, 1766, in Sullivan, ed., 5:168; Thomas Gage to William Johnson, September 1, 1766, in Sullivan, ed., 5:368. 33 Guy Carleton to William Johnson, April 14, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:537. 34 Thomas Gage to William Johnson, April 13, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:536.

47 seeking redress for the actions of the Quebecois traders. “Since they [the Quebecois] have become British subjects,” he continued, “we have seen so many Instances of their Perfidy false stories &ca” that the “Bounds of a Letter will not permit me” to “point out all the

Slights, Frauds in Trade unjust Grants of Land, Indigities & Acts of Violence, together with the Encouragements & Misrepresentations” they have committed. “All [of this] occasioned the late Indian War with its train of disagreeable Consequences, to the

Colonies,” he informed Carleton, and now the Quebecois traders were “doing all in their

Power to excite the Indians to Quarrel with Us.”35 Johnson evidently believed that

Carleton might help him to regulate the Indian trade and restrain the Quebecois traders he considered the root of all his problems in the borderlands. Soon, however, Johnson would discover that Carleton could be just as much a source of frustration as his predecessor.

Rather than offer his assistance, Carleton instead responded to Johnson’s complaints with evasion. “When I talk here of that Perfidy, false Stories, or Views of exciting and Indian War, you complain of,” Carleton wrote to Johnson in March, “they

[the Quebecois] appeal” to “all the rest of our Officers, who were spectators of the last, and are Confident these will give Testimony of very different Dispositions in them at that

Time.” “They very plainly shew me, that such a War must be very destructive to them,” he confided to Johnson, and “in Case of such a Misfortune that they then did, and would again chearfully take up Arms, to reduce them to Peace by force.”36 According to

Carleton, then, the Quebecois were not endeavoring to undermine the empire’s hold on the west, rather they were its staunchest adherents in the north and should therefore be considered a valuable tool in relations with the Indians. It took some particularly flexible

35 William Johnson to Guy Carleton, January 27, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:479-82. 36 Guy Carleton to William Johnson, March 27, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:521.

48 mental efforts to characterize the Quebecois response to the militia muster during

Pontiac’s War as “cheerful,” but Carleton was evidently willing to make the attempt. In fact, he contended, it would not be the Quebecois who would loosen the empire’s grip on its new territories, but Johnson himself. Thus, in Carleton, Johnson found not an ally, but yet another obstacle to his administration of Indian affairs. Moreover, as it turned out,

Carleton would prove far more effective at opposing Johnson’s policies than had his predecessor.

As Johnson would soon discover, on the very same day that Carleton wrote to him denying his allegations, the new governor of Quebec had written to William Petty, 2nd

Earl of Shelburne and Secretary of State for the Southern Department (which until 1782 included the colonies). “I both hope & believe, from all I have been able to learn since my Arrival,” he informed his superior, “that the Persons Sir William Johnson says, are spreading unfavourable Suspicions of Us among the Indians, and endeavouring to turn them against Us, are from new Orleans, & not from Canada.”37 Carleton’s assertions did not, apparently, fall on unreceptive ears. By June, Shelburne had written to the

Superintendent of Indian Affairs to suggest that an “Exception to the Rules observed in the other Provinces might . . . be safely allowed” in order to extend “our Commerce among those Savages who reside at a Distance too great to allow their visiting, much less

Trading with our Posts.”38 By allowing the Quebecois to trade outside the borderlands outposts, Shelburne therefore apparently believed that the British empire’s influence would not be limited to the Great Lakes region and trans-Appalachian West where

37 Guy Carleton to Lord Shelburne, March 27, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:524. 38 Lord Shelburne to William Johnson, June 20, 1767, in Sullivan, ed., 5:566.

49 outposts had been established.39 Rather, relying on Quebecois traders might also open opportunities to further engage with Indians residing farther west, allowing the British to tap into diplomatic and commercial networks that extended through the lands of the Oceti

Sakowin (Sioux) to encompass nearly the entire continent north of New Spain. The

Quebecois could thus potentially be, in Shelburne’s mind, the key to countering the influence of French and Spanish traders from Louisiana and establishing Britain as the dominant force in the imperial struggle to control the Western Hemisphere.

It was a lofty dream, and it was one that Johnson most certainly did not believe possible given his own difficulties just to influence affairs west of the Mississippi River.

After all, as Johnson wrote in his official report on the Indian trade, the “Authority of

[his] Commissaries is nothing.”40 It was a complaint for which authorities in London evidently had little time, and soon Johnson began hearing rumors that responsibility for managing the Indian trade would once more be divided between the individual provincial governments. The Indian trade “shod. be under one Genl. Super Intendence,” he protested to Gage in the fall of 1768, and “I believe that a proper representative of the Matter, and a due Attention given to the Subject by his Majesty & the Ministry would produce the

Same opinion at Court.”41 If metropolitan officials would simply listen to him, and compare his years of experience to that of those that gainsaid him, he thought, they would see that he was right.

39 See Daniel Patrick Ingram, Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014). 40 “Review of the Trade and Affairs of the Indians in the Northern District of America,” in E.B. O'Callaghan, John Romeyn Brodhead, and Berthold Fernow, eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, 15 vols. (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1853-1887), 7:964. 41 William Johnson to Thomas Gage, September 12, 1768, in Sullivan, ed., 6:363.

50 It was a thought formed in vain. By the end of 1768, he had lost his hold on the

Indian trade, and Quebecois traders were allowed once more to winter in indigenous communities as they had so frequently requested. The implications of this decision,

Johnson believed, were clear. We will have “[little power &} inclination to punish

Offenders” he wrote to Sir Henry Moore on November 24 of that year, but the Indians will “expect Justice, and those distant pe[ople having] no other means, & being naturally of a very Revengefull disposition are on the Slenderest occasions easily provoked to an

Imediate Retaliation.”42 With the Quebecois given free rein to roam in the borderlands,

Johnson argued, indigenous resentments toward the British might once more reach a boiling point. The metropole’s decision to tie his hands could therefore, according to

Johnson, spell the doom of the empire’s pretensions to authority in the west.

The Fight for the Indian Department

By protecting his new subjects from Johnson’s efforts to restrain them, then,

Carleton had, in Johnson’s mind, threatened the stability of the entire imperial project.

What’s more, Carleton seemed determined to press his advantage after the inroads he had made against the Indian department. Like his predecessor in 1763, Carleton had received instructions from the metropole in 1768 to appoint Indian agents for Quebec.43 In fact, his instructions in that regard were copied verbatim from those sent to Murray five years earlier, an indication of how little had been done in London to resolve the conflicts between its various colonial departments. Unlike Murray, however, Carleton chose not to inform Johnson of his instructions, but simply to act on them. Still, that did not mean that

Johnson was not unaware. Indeed, his son-in-law, Daniel Claus (deputy agent to the

42 William Johnson to Henry Moore, November 24, 1768, in Sullivan, ed., 6: 495. 43 “Instructions to Governor Carleton,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:319.

51 Indians of Quebec) kept him apprised of Carleton’s every move, the first of which was to attempt to recruit Claus himself. “The Governour asked me if I knew abt. the late

Alterations [in the Dep]artment,” Claus wrote to Johnson in August of 1768, “I replied I did something” and “he told me [he would] be very glad to continue me in his Province” as an Indian agent.44 Carleton had, evidently, decided that the best means of controlling

Indian affairs in Quebec was to plagiarize Johnson’s work, primarily by enticing the foundation of the Indian department’s influence in the province (Claus) to join his own government.

As time went on, though, it became clear that Carleton would not be satisfied with simply poaching Johnson’s employees. The “Carleton side,” Claus told Johnson in a letter four years later, are so “jealous & ignorant” as “to think the Canada Indians ought not to be under your Direction” at all.45 In Claus’s mind, Carleton erroneously undermined British-Indian relations in the north. The consequences of Carleton’s errors would be made manifest during the rebel invasion of Quebec in 1775, when the majority of the province’s Indians chose to remain neutral, largely refusing to cooperate with

Carleton’s summons to rise in the defense of his province.

The roots of that refusal lay in Carleton’s repeated interference in the internal affairs of the indigenous communities that dotted the St. Lawrence River Valley. Chief among those affairs was the dispute between the Mohawk residents of (St.

Regis) and Abenaki members of Odanak (Saint-Francois-de-Sales or St. Francis). Formed in the seventeenth century with the help of Jesuit missionaries, both communities were home to indigenous groups that sought to shield themselves from the worst excesses of

44 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, August 3, 1768, in Sullivan, ed., 6:302. 45 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, July 3, 1772, in Sullivan, ed., 8:525.

52 colonial expansion through firm attachments to the French Empire. For much of that century and the next, their decision had borne fruit. During the Seven Years’ War, however, that fruit proved itself overripe. In 1759, the British Major Robert Rogers, famed commander of Rogers’ Rangers, ordered the destruction of Odanak, left defenseless by Abenaki men aiding in the defense of the city of Quebec. In their absence, those men’s families sought shelter in Akwesasne, where they were welcomed on the condition that they return to their own lands as soon as peace was restored. A decade later, the Abenakis of Odanak continued to reside among the Mohawks of Akwesasne, fostering growing tensions over the course of the period.

This situation was by no means helped by Carleton’s appointment in 1769 of

Joseph-Hippolyte Hertel de Saint-Francois as interpreter to the Abenakis. During the

Seven Years’ War, Hertel had served at the head of Indian raids from Fort Carillon

(Ticonderoga), and later (after a brief sojourn in France) had fought under Colonel Henry

Bouquet in his expedition against the Delawares during Pontiac’s War. Hertel’s extensive experience fighting alongside Indians, however, had evidently done little to educate him on the finer points of living among them. His presence among the Abenakis quickly drew the ire of their Mohawk hosts, who believed that he was encouraging the Odanak Indians to remain in Akwesasne so that he might profit from their trade in fur. That ire grew exponentially over time. Within two months of his arrival in the community, the Mohawk residents had threatened to physically eject him from the premises. Claus reported the entirety of the affair to Sir William Johnson in a letter written shortly thereafter. “The

Iroquois on [Hertel’s] Arrival,” he confided to Johnson, were “to a Man opposed & refused him to stay, telling him they could not live [in] peace & Harmony while he was

53 among them, as he delighted in Making Mischief & Divisions.” So, he told Johnson,

Hertel “got his Mother an envenom’d peace to write to the Govr. (himself being incapable)” in order to “wind him up to that pitch as to send positive Orders to the

Iroquois to receive Mr. Hartell without the least Opposition on their peril, & not to molest the Abinaquis in residing there.”46 Hertel’s complaints fell on receptive ears. Carleton interceded on his behalf shortly after hearing of his difficulties in Akwesasne.

The affair did not end there, however. Eager as he was to influence Indian affairs in the province and ever supportive of Quebecois traders, Carleton couldn’t help but summon Claus to Quebec City to more permanently resolve the matter in Hertel’s favor.

Claus recorded the details of his eventual meeting with Carleton in their entirety in the same letter in which he informed Johnson of the Akwesasne Indians’s efforts to remove

Hertel from their community. Carleton was convinced, Claus told Johnson, that removing

Hertel or the Abenakis from Akwesasne “would only cause ill blood between the Indns.

& cause a War.”47 If Carleton was right, forcing the Abenakis to return to Odanak could prove a drastic detriment to imperial aims in Quebec.

The problem was, according to Claus, that Carleton (like his superiors in the metropole) seemed to have little knowledge of Indian affairs or how they were meant to be conducted. Indeed, Claus spent much of the meeting attempting to correct Carleton’s misapprehensions of the history of the Native communities within his province. “He said the Iroquois of Aughquisasne must drop those Notions of appropriating any Lands or

Spots of Ground in Canada,” Claus recalled, for “they had never had any in the french time” and had arrived on their current lands “but a day or two” before the Abenakis. “I

46 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, August 25, 1769, in Sullivan, ed., 7:128-29. 47 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, August 25, 1769, in Sullivan, ed., 7:127.

54 smiled,” Claus recounted, and “told him” that those Indians would “not enter so rashly into a War with the Allies of the 6 [Nations].” “I [also] told him,” he noted, “that the

Mohawks “had been [in Akwesasne] several Years before [the Abenakis]” and had

“pitched upon the Spot themselves as within the Limits of their & the 6 Nations hunting

Ground.”48 Carleton’s untutored interventions in the dispute between the Odanak and

Akwesasne Indians would, Claus believed, only make the antipathy among the Indians worse. As the years passed, that belief only grew stronger.

Indeed, according to Claus, Carleton seemed incapable of little more than antagonizing the Indians in his province. “He lost his Credt. wth the Caghnaws

[Kahnwakes] & Aughquiss,” he told Johnson, who “dislike his appointing and consulting with french People in their Affrs. & say they will have nothing to say to them.” For that reason, he continued, the Indians of Akwesasne and Kahnawake had requested that

Carleton “not meddle in their domestick Affrs.,” he being an “entire Stranger to them.” 49

The impact of Carleton’s actions was, according to Claus, exceedingly clear. If he continued to do meddle in Native affairs, he would only cause chaos in Native communities.

The residents of Kahnawake soon found Claus’s assertions proven correct when

Carleton chose to send his nephew, Christopher Carleton (an officer in the British army), to forcibly eject the Jesuit priest Joseph Huguet from the community in early 1770.

Huguet had for several years been involved in a boundary dispute with his own indigenous congregation over the exact division between his mission and Kahnawake proper. When Carleton sent his nephew and the Quebecois trader Mathieu-Benjamin

48 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, August 25, 1769, in Sullivan, ed., 7:127-28. 49 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, August 25, 1769, in Sullivan, ed., 7:129.

55 Damours de Clignancour to remove Huguet in the hopes of negating what he saw as a source of Native unrest, however, the Kahnwakes complained to Antoine Gordan

(Anthony Gordon), the Jesuit priest at Akwesasne, asking that Huguet be allowed to remain with them.50 Gordan, in turn, asked Claus in April of 1770 to intercede with the governor on Huguet’s behalf. The Kahnawakes are “much displeased [with] young Mr.

Carleton,” Gordan told Claus, and “they say he is a child that knows nothing [of] Indn

Matters but to put them in confusion.”51 Unspoken, but intimated just beneath the surface, was that the Kahnawakes considered Christopher Carleton’s uncle little better.

One could easily see why the Kahnawakes might think so. After all, missionaries like Huguet often came to serve as cultural mediators in negotiations between indigenous groups and European colonizers. Indeed, as James Merrell has argued, such “go- betweens” formed the backbone of negotiations between European and Native leaders during the colonial period.52 Without individuals with knowledge of both cultures’ worldviews and expectations, negotiations between the two quickly broke down. In fact, according to Merrell, the period between the Seven Years’ War and the American War for Independence was one in which go-betweens were in increasingly short supply as a result of the growing racialization of both colonial and Native societies.53 As Catholics, the Kahnawakes would have valued Huguet’s services not just as an interlocutor between them and the divine, but as a powerful advocate of theirs with civil authorities.54 That

50 Anthony Gordon to Daniel Claus, April 9, 1770, in Sullivan, ed., 7:532. 51 Anthony Gordon to Daniel Claus, April 9, 1770, in Sullivan, ed., 7:532. 52 James Hart Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: Norton, 2000), 28-34. 53 Merrell, Into the American Woods, 288-94. 54 Jesuits had a long history of serving as cultural brokers. See “Collaboration and Community,” in Robert Michael Morrissey, Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 63-84.

56 they turned to another Jesuit missionary, Gordan, to regain their own is an indication of just how important they considered such priests’ dual roles. Once more, then, Carleton’s ignorance of Native affairs threatened the breakdown of British-Indian relations.

Claus was, to say the least, outraged. “If the Indians there [Kahnawake] are dealt with in the Manner [described],” he wrote to Johnson after Gordan had informed him of

Christopher Carleton’s actions, “it must be allowed by every Body [to be] cruel & despotic, shamefull Behaviour.” Moreover, according to Claus, Carleton may not have been simply ignorant of Indian affairs but was acting to bring the Canadian Indians under his full control by whatever means he saw fit. Even worse, Carleton seemed to have little regard for the Indians within his province (or Indians in general). “He pretends to be fond of Indns.,” Claus confided to Johnson, “but they must Obey else be treated a la mili[taire].”55 Claus’s conviction in the damage such an attitude might cause only grew stronger as time progressed.

An incident in the summer of 1773 that Claus recorded in his journal was particularly revealing. “Two Chiefs Limanet & Athanas with their Interpr. a french Mettis

[someone with both European and Indian heritage] came to me,” he wrote, and “told me the Govr. had sent for them.” But, he went on, “when they came to the Govr. he kicked the Interpr. out adoors & then sent for me.” When Claus arrived, he recalled in his journal, Carleton told him that “he could not bear these half breed Indns. & never would let them come near him.”56 Evidently, the governor did not approve of racial admixture, a sentiment that may have indicated a deeper conviction on his part that the Natives with which he dealt were in some way inherently inferior to Europeans. Though such beliefs

55 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, May 5, 1770, in Sullivan, ed., 7:639. 56 “Claus Journal,” in Sullivan, ed., 13:631.

57 would hardly have set Carleton apart from many of his colleagues in Britain’s imperial service, they did have consequences for his efforts as an administrator. Metis like the one he had physically removed from his office had, like missionaries, long served as intermediaries during negotiations between colonial and Native leaders. By allowing his notions of indigenous inferiority to color his interactions with the Indians of Quebec, he permitted the threat of a breakdown in relations with those Indians to rise once more.

According to Claus, though, Carleton’s behavior could have consequences that reached far beyond the confines of Quebec. These are “People [Carleton] may perhaps think to have in our power,” he wrote to Johnson in his report on the removal of Huguet from Kahnawake, but their treatment “may have bad Impressions upon Distant

Nations.”57 It was a warning that Johnson took seriously. Hearing of a provincial governor’s poor treatment of the Indians living within his domain could potentially influence the dispositions of indigenous groups living further west. Such groups were ones with whom the Indians of Quebec already traded, with whom the British sought to trade, and with whose assistance Johnson feared the French might seek to regain their former territories on the continent. The possibility of alienating them before Johnson’s agents could ever even bring them to the negotiating table was thus a serious one with direct ramifications for the empire’s authority in its recent territorial acquisitions.

To avoid this possibility, Johnson once more sought the intercession of Gage, writing to him less than a week after receiving news of the Kahnawake affair from Claus.

Unlike Claus, however, Johnson did not believe Carleton’s prejudice against Indians to be the root of the issue, but rather his prejudice in favor of the Quebecois. “I have

57 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, May 5, 1770, in Sullivan, ed., 7:638.

58 received sevl. Accots from Canada,” he informed Gage, that speak of the “dissatisfaction of the . . . Indians” with Carleton. This unrest, he argued, was largely encouraged “thro’ the Means of two or three frenchmen there [who] have endeavored to impose on [the]

Govr.”58 Just as with his interference with the Indian trade, then, Carleton had, in

Johnson’s mind, undermined imperial aims by allowing himself to be unduly influenced by the Quebecois.

Chief among the “two or three frenchmen” in Quebec that Johnson believed to be imposing on Carleton was Saint-Luc de la Corne, father-in-law to John Campbell, accused assailant of Thomas Walker, and frequent thorn in Johnson’s side over the course of the period. Carleton had, like Murray, attempted to appoint Campbell as Indian agent for Quebec shortly after his appointment as governor, a move that Johnson was certain would mean that the whole of Indian affairs in the province “would fall under the partial management of Mr. St. Luc.” “I cant help entertaining strong Suspicions” against St. Luc,

Johnson wrote to Gage in 1773, and even though Carleton may “have a high opinion of

[his] merit” my suspicions against him have “have indeed been lately corroborated.”59

Indeed, the previous George Turnbull, British commander at Michilimackinac

(modern-day Mackinac Island in what is now Michigan), had reported that Saint-Luc had delivered a belt of wampum to the Anishinaabegs living at La Cloche at the eastern end of Lake Huron in current . The belt, Turnbull related, had told the Anishinaabegs to “keep yourselves Quiet for two Years more” and then “get up, for it will be war.”

Moreover, Turnbull reported, when he had asked the leader of La Croche “if he Looks

58 William Johnson to Thomas Gage, May 10, 1770, in Sullivan, ed., 7:654. 59 William Johnson to Thomas Gage, July 4, 1773, in Sullivan, ed., 12:1114.

59 upon Saint-Luc as his French Father” he “said he did.”60 If the empire’s representatives in the west were to be believed, then, Saint-Luc was not simply undermining imperial interests out of ignorance like Carleton, but was actively encouraging unrest among the

Indians in the hopes of giving his former sovereign an opportunity to regain a foothold in

North America. If evidence of Saint-Luc’s actions could be obtained, Johnson could very well accuse the Quebecois trader of treason. But, to Johnson’s consternation, Carleton continued to defend him.

Saint-Luc was not the only trader that Carleton sought to protect from Johnson’s wrath. Indeed, Johnson’s correspondents made it seem as though the traders of Quebec ran rampant among indigenous communities throughout the period. Writing in July of

1772, Daniel Claus described the situation in stark terms. “Thro the pernicious practice of these Traders [the] Indians are exposed to the greatest Miseries & Calamities,” he wrote, and the “Traders abuse them and defy them to hinder them,” telling them “that they would go there armed & repell [them] by force.” “I have laid [the Indians’ complaints] before Govr. Carleton,” he concluded, but “seemingly to no purpose.”61 The traders of

Quebec, then, evidently felt reasonably secure in their dominance of the Indian trade under the auspices of Carleton’s seemingly unwavering support. Johnson’s warning upon losing control of that trade four years earlier, that Quebecois traders would undermine

British-Indian relations if allowed to roam free in the west, therefore appeared to be coming true. The Quebecois were thus, Johnson was convinced, one of the primary threats to imperial authority in the era.

60 George Turnbull to Thomas Gage, May 28, 1772, in Sullivan, ed., 8:501-2. 61 Daniel Claus to William Johnson, July 8, 1772, in Sullivan, ed., 12:972.

60 It was a conviction that Johnson made sure to convey to his superiors in London.

Indeed, Johnson wrote to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State for the Colonies, expressing his concerns just a few short months before his death in

August of 1774. The Quebecois are “never without Inclination to hurt us,” he warned.

“This is not so much the case of their common people,” he claimed, but of the “Noblesse or principl. Traders” who have “within these few Years had the address to acquire powerfull Advocates.” This “has probably occasioned the French Govt. to consider [the

Quebecois] as very well Calculated to create a diversion here, in case of a Rupture,” he warned, “or to second their endeavors, shod. they find it Eligible to re-establish themselves in America.”62 In the last months of his life, then, Johnson was concerned most with obviating the threat to his empire from the north. Now, in the twilight of that life, he could only hope that his successors would likewise appreciate the danger that emanated from that quarter.

Unfortunately for him, that was not to be. Despite his stated preference that he be succeeded by Daniel Claus and his nephew Guy Johnson after his death, metropolitan officials appointed John Campbell to serve as Indian agent for Quebec upon Sir

William’s passing. What’s more, with the expansion of Quebec’s borders under the

Quebec Act of the same year to encompass the Great Lakes region and trans-Appalachian

West, Campbell’s appointment had effectively rendered the jurisdiction of the northern

Indian department null and void, and thus the department itself largely an appendage of the provincial government of Quebec. So, Sir William Johnson went to his grave with his

62 William Johnson to Lord Dartmouth, May 2, 1774, in Sullivan, ed., 8:1142-43.

61 last wishes, like so many other desires he had had as Superintendent of the Indian

Department, unfulfilled.

Carleton’s Vision for Quebec

If Johnson died with his wishes unfulfilled, Carleton was in that same moment seeing his own wishes granted. The 1774 Quebec Act was certainly a victory for Carleton in his fight to make inroads into the Indian department. It almost doubled the territories within his province and brought Indian affairs in the north and west under his jurisdiction. But, of equal importance, it also served as the capstone of Carleton’s efforts since his appointment as governor to administer the province in the manner he believed would best secure Quebecois loyalties to the empire. The approach for which he advocated flew directly in the face of his metropolitan superiors’ vision for Quebec’s role in imperial relations. Because those superiors were, like so many of their subjects, convinced that the Quebecois were culturally inferior as the former subjects of France,

Quebec’s integration into the British Empire after the 1763 Treaty of Paris posed not only administrative challenges but intellectual ones as well. After all, the self-proclaimed global defenders of Protestant liberty could not very well embrace thousands of French

Catholics as fellow subjects without first determining the manner in which the perceived threat those subjects posed to imperial security might be neutralized.

Given the nature of the Quebecois’ presumed inferiority, it is perhaps not unexpected that the key to this neutralization was determined to be religious and cultural conversion. This was reflected in the Crown’s initial instructions to Carleton’s predecessor James Murray in December of 1763. For the “Discouragement of Vice and

Encouragement of Virtue and good living,” the instructions read, “all possible

62 Encouragement [should] be given to the erecting Protestant Schools” so that the

“Protestant Religion may be promoted, established and encouraged in Our Province.” In this way, they concluded, the “Inhabitants [of Canada] may by Degrees be induced to embrace the Protestant Religion, and their Children be brought up in the Principles of it.”63 This state-sponsored youth education would, metropolitan officials evidently hoped, inculcate in the Quebecois all the “Virtue” displayed by those residing in Great Britain proper. No longer would they be mired in Catholic superstition. Instead, the Quebecois would be convinced through education of the benefits of life under presumably less tyrannical religious and political systems than those to which they were accustomed. The gratitude that metropolitan officials believed would be produced in the province by this supposed liberation from the perceived ignorance of life under French Catholic tyranny would then hopefully cement the Quebecois’ loyalties to those responsible. At the same time, this gratitude would help to further sever the ties that remained between the

Quebecois and their former French rulers, ties that Johnson had warned metropolitan officials in his last months on Earth would be used to sway uncertain loyalties at key moments in future conflicts.

For Murray and his successor Carleton, however, any such efforts to wrest the

Quebecois’ culture away from them were, at best, ill advised. Not only was cultural conversion unlikely in practical terms given the sheer number of former French subjects in the province, they believed, it was also unsuited to what they perceived as the

Quebecois character. After decades of French Catholic rule, they argued, that character was far too accustomed to submitting to authority to entertain the ‘liberty’ of

63 “Instructions to Governor Murray,” December 7, 1763, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:191-92.

63 Protestantism and British parliamentary governance. Instead, Quebec’s governors asserted, their subjects would respond far better to a more martial form of authority.

Murray explained his reasoning in a letter to George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax and Secretary of State for the Southern Department, in October of 1764. The “Canadians are to a man Soldiers,” Murray explained, and “I am convinced [that] it will be easyer for a Soldier to introduce and make palateable to them Our Laws, and Customs, than it can be for a Man degraded from the Profession of Arms.”64 It would not be religious instruction, then, that would prove most effective in convincing the Quebecois of the benefits of life as a British subject. Rather, for Murray, the key to the Quebecois’ integration into the British Empire lay in their receiving instruction from the proper source, and, perhaps naturally in his military mind, that source should be a military one.

Like the opinions of his superiors in Britain proper, Murray’s assertions seem to have been at least partially informed by popular British conceptions of the tyranny inherent in French life and governance. Because the Quebecois were theoretically more accustomed to absolute rule, Murray evidently believed that they would be more responsive to a relatively authoritarian form of British administration. His hope was thus, apparently, to manipulate this supposed French penchant for absolute government authority towards British imperial ends by constructing Quebecois loyalties on a preexisting foundation of instinctive obedience. Doing so would allow him to root his own authority as governor in mechanisms of local power that the Quebecois already theoretically respected, while also conveniently sidestepping the controversial issue of

64 James Murray to Lord Halifax, October 15, 1764, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:211.

64 religious conversion. Forced to deal with the challenges of governing a perceptibly foreign populace in less than ideal conditions, then, Murray once more made do.

Murray’s successor, however, had a much more concrete plan of action for securing Quebecois loyalties, a plan that revolved around the establishment of a

Quebecois militia and enforcement of service therein for all able-bodied adult men in the province. “As long as the Canadians are deprived of all Places of Trust,” Carleton wrote in a letter to the Earl of Shelburne in January of 1768, they “never can forget” that “they no longer are under the Dominion of their natural Sovereign.” A “few Companies of

Canadian Foot judiciously officered,” he suggested, “would make very considerable

Alterations on the Minds of the People.”65 Appointing elite Quebecois men to command positions within the militia would, he argued, “hold up Hopes to the Gentlemen, that their

Children, without being bred up in France, or the French Service, might support their

Families in the Service of the King their Master.”66 This might also, he believed, secure the loyalties of the habitants, since the “common People are greatly to be influenced by their Seigneurs.”67 By returning Quebecois elites to the positions of respect they had lost after the Seven Years War, then, Carleton evidently hoped that it might be possible to secure their loyalties to the British Empire. Moreover, by doing so, he might in turn secure the loyalties of all those that followed the seigneurs.

Carleton was not entirely unjustified in holding out hope for such an eventuality.

As Christian Ayne Crouch observes, during much of the preceding century Quebec’s seigneurs had served as the backbone of the compagnies franches de la marine, the

65 Lieutenant Governor Carleton to Lord Shelburne, January 20, 1768, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:295. 66 Lieutenant Governor Carleton to Lord Shelburne, January 20, 1768, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:295. 67 Lieutenant Governor Carleton to Lord Shelburne, November 25, 1767, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:283.

65 colonial wing of France’s military forces.68 Seigneurial families in Quebec had occupied positions within the officer corps of la marine for generations prior to the cession of the province to the British, positions that were often handed down from father to son and offered considerable opportunities for (relative) fame and fortune. Indeed, for many seigneurs, the income generated from seigneurial rents paled in comparison to the wealth they gained by leveraging their influence as officers of la marine to negotiate lucrative trade deals in the borderlands and secure administrative appointments for their family members. As a result, service in la marine often translated into a means for seigneurial families to maintain their status in the colony both socially and economically. In return,

Quebec’s seigneurs helped French administrators navigate the complex byways of colonial governance and diplomacy, working to preserve relationships with neighboring indigenous groups and exert authority over the province’s habitants majority. By advocating for the creation of a Quebecois militia with an officer corps culled from the seigneurial class, Carleton thus sought to position himself and the empire he represented as the new benefactors of preexisting power structures within the province. It was a tactic that over the course of the next century and a half would become standard operating procedure throughout much of the British Empire.69

In Carleton’s era, however, such a tactic was not without its difficulties. Indeed,

Carleton himself acknowledged these difficulties in a letter to General Thomas Gage in

February of 1775. The “Habitants or Peasantry,” he admitted, “will require Time, and discreet Management” to “recall . . . to their ancient Habits of Obedience and Discipline,”

68 Christian Ayne Crouch, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). 69 See Shaunnagh Dorsett and John McLaren, eds., Legal Histories of the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2015).

66 especially “considering all the new Ideas they have been acquiring for these ten years past.” Still, he believed, the successful establishment of a militia “might be of singular

Use” in “firmly attaching, the Gentry, to our Interests” by “restoring them to a significance they have nearly lost” and “through their Means obtaining a further

Influence upon the Lower Class of People.”70 Thus, if the hurdles to establishing a

Quebecois militia could be overcome, it would be of great benefit to the enforcement of

British authority in the province for years to come.

With the beginning of the rebellion in the lower thirteen colonies, however,

Carleton’s belief in the utility of a Quebecois militia would be sorely tested as his pet project was called to arms to defend his province and his empire from a rapidly expanding conflict that threatened to wrest all of North America from British control.

Indeed, Carleton’s test began almost immediately upon the commencement of hostilities between British forces and the lower thirteen colonies, since one of the rebels’ first actions was to begin planning for a northern invasion. As soon as word was received of the rebellion, he informed the Earl of Dartmouth in a letter from June of 1775, the

“Noblesse of this Neighbourhood” were “called upon to collect their Inhabitants, in order to defend themselves.” Unfortunately, he admitted with some chagrin, “tho’ the

Gentlemen testified great Zeal, neither their Entreaties or their Example could prevail upon the People.”71 In short, he wrote, the “Minds of the People” had been “poisoned by the same Hypocrisy and Lies practiced with so much Success in the other Provinces” and the seigneurs had “lost much of their influence over the People.”72 A dozen years within

70 Guy Carleton to Thomas Gage, February 4, 1775, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 2:660-62. 71 Guy Carleton to Lord Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 2:664. 72 Guy Carleton to Lord Dartmouth, June 7, 1775, in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 2:665.

67 the British Empire had done little to heighten Quebecois enthusiasm for militia service, it seemed, leaving Carleton to face a dilemma not unlike that of his predecessor James

Murray during Pontiac’s War in 1764.

What’s more, should he fail to rise to the occasion, Carleton faced the possibility of suffering similar consequences. Indeed, in his letters to metropolitan officials, Carleton himself had directly predicated his authority as governor upon his ability to successfully attach Quebecois loyalties to the empire through the establishment of a militia. Should that establishment fail, metropolitan officials eager to pursue their own policies of assimilation might be able to seize the upper hand, using the failure of the militia as evidence of the impracticable and unrealistic character of his vision for the future integration of Quebec into the British Empire. This would, in turn, most likely spell doom for Carleton’s prospects as governor of the province. Thus, the rebellion ushered the future of Quebec within the British Empire towards a critical juncture in which the fate of the province and Carleton’s career would be determined by the success or failure of any military forces he managed to martial. That juncture would arrive shortly after the entrance of Continental Army troops into the province in August of 1775 under General

Richard Montgomery. Ultimately, despite the eventual retreat of rebel forces from the province, the invasion would bring to light fundamental flaws in Carleton’s understanding of indigenous and Quebecois motivations, flaws that the governor’s political adversaries used to dismantle his vision for Quebec brick by brick.

The 1775 Quebec Campaign

Carleton’s problems began almost immediately at the outset of the campaign. By

November, the outpost guarding the northern end of , Fort Saint-Jean,

68 had surrendered to rebel forces, leaving the way open for Montgomery’s men to seize nearby Montreal, which Carleton quickly abandoned in favor of a retreat to the more defensible city of Quebec. In the hands of his political opponents, chief among them Guy

Johnson (Sir William Johnson’s chosen successor as head of the Indian Department)

Carleton’s inability to hold Montreal against the rebels soon became a means of endeavoring to dismantle the gains he had made in the Quebec Act the previous year.

According to Johnson, that failure was rooted largely in Carleton’s refusal to properly deploy the indigenous forces at his disposal during the siege, forces that Johnson himself had managed to muster after the governor had failed.

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775,

Johnson had (in his capacity as the newly appointed superintendent of an Indian department much diminished by the 1774 Quebec Act) begun making overtures to various indigenous groups in the hopes of gaining their assistance against the rebellion.

Learning in May that rebel authorities intended to arrest him, however, he had proceeded as quickly as possible to Ontario (the traditional meeting place for negotiations between

British officials and the Indians of the Great Lakes), which he reached in June. Once there, he was able to convince the Wyandots (Hurons) of Detroit to help that outpost’s troops to hold it against any attempts made by the rebels to seize it. Then, before he left, he issued a call to the Native communities of the west to join the British in quashing the rebellion. In the short-term, it seemed to have worked. Two hundred and twenty Indians

(chiefly from the Wyandots and Iroquois) followed Johnson from Ontario to meet

Carleton at Montreal in mid-July. By the end of the month, an estimated 1600 Indians had joined them.

69 Unfortunately for Johnson, however, Carleton seemed staunchly opposed to using those forces in the defense of his province.73 Johnson’s recorded his growing frustration with that opposition in the report on Indian transactions he submitted to his metropolitan superiors in January of 1776. During Johnson’s first meeting with Carleton in Montreal, the report read, the governor declared that “Quebec must depend on the Canadian militia” and the Indians “must in the mean time be amused in the best manner that could be found” as “he did not think it prudent to let them go beyond the 45th deg. Of Lat. Or over the Province Line.”74 Carleton, it seemed, was wary of utilizing the men Johnson had gathered.75 It is possible that his wariness stemmed in part from his unwillingness to rely on Johnson as a go-between given his long-time antagonism toward Johnson’s family.

Given the fact that Carleton later insisted on meeting the Indians that had arrived to

Montreal on Johnson’s summons himself, rather than allowing Johnson to meet them as planned, this possibility seems likely.76 Apparently no one, including and especially

Johnson, could engage with the Indians in the province without the governor’s express permission.

73 The British Ministry did not share Carleton’s opposition, however, instructing Johnson to do everything in his power to recruit the Six Nations as allies against the rebellion shortly after the outbreak of hostilities. See Lord Dartmouth to Guy Johnson, July 14, 1775, Correspondence, Original – Secretary of State (CO) 5/76/125, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA). 74 “Records of Indian Transactions, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:97. The British Ministry, it seemed, did not share Carleton’s hopes to the same degree, making overtures to the Russian Empire requesting 20,000 auxiliary troops and directing the bulk of the reinforcements it sent across the Atlantic to Quebec, rather than the contemporaneously besieged city of Boston, which it indicated a willingness to abandon in favor of the northern province. See Lord Darmouth to William Howe, September 5, 1775, Headquarters Papers of the British Army in North America (BHQ), vol. 1, f. 32., TNA; Lord Rockford to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, September 21, 1775, BHQ, vol. 1, f. 47, TNA. 75 Indeed, Carleton specifically instructed his inferior officers not to depend on the Indians for their plans of defense. See Guy Carleton to Charles Preston, June 8, 1775, Charles Preston fonds, R7098-0-2-E, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (LAC). 76 “Records of Indian Transactions, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:97.

70 That Carleton adopted this attitude, refusing to allow the Indians to do anything other than wait, only vexed Johnson further.77 The “Indians could not be managed as other people,” Johnson warned Carleton, and it was “Extremely Necessary to put [them] as soon as possible in motion as they were unaccustomed to remain Long Idle.” It was an argument to which Carleton gave little credit, for “all in the Province,” the governor declared in response to Johnson’s warning, “must be subject to [his] orders.”78 Forced into inaction by Carleton’s demands, Johnson did his best to keep the Native fighters that met him in Montreal busy. Many were young men eager to prove themselves in battle, men with whom Carleton’s command to remain idle rather than fight did not sit well.

Johnson did what he could to keep those men occupied, using them to relieve the soldiers stationed at the nearby outpost of Saint-Jean and to scout the lands above the province’s border through which the rebels might invade.

As time passed, however, Johnson’s ability to maintain the indigenous forces at

Montreal at current levels became increasingly untenable, a state of affairs that Carleton seems to have chosen largely to ignore. Johnson wrote to Carleton “Representing [the

Indians’] urgency to go against the Rebels,” saying that it might help to “Restrain . . . men unaccustomed to [an] inactivity” that might “abate their Ardour” and “occasion their defection.” But, Carleton again refused to consider his request. So, when Johnson was informed by his scouts on September 4 that the rebels had been sighted at Isle aux Noix and intended to march for Fort Saint-Jean, he leapt at his chance to engage the enemy

77 Johnson was not the only British agent that expressed frustration with Carleton’s behavior. Henry Hamilton, governor of Detroit, expressed similar concerns in a September 1775 letter to Lord Dartmouth, writing that he had been forced to disperse a considerable body of Ottawas, Anishinaabegs, Hurons, Shawnees, Senecas, Delawares, and Potawatomies who had arrived in Detroit on their way to the succor of Quebec. This in turn led to Lord Germain admonishing Carleton. See Lord Germain to Guy Carleton, March 26, 1777, BHQ, vol. 4, f. 462, TNA. 78 “Records of Indian Transactions, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:97.

71 within the borders of the province, sending men to bolster the garrison at Saint-Jean and ordering last-minute repairs to the walls of Montreal. The Indians Johnson sent to the outpost forced the invading army to pay a high price in their efforts to capture it. Indeed, when Richard Montgomery landed his troops a mile from the post, the Indians “sallied out and engaged them with so much success that they obliged them to Retire twice” and

“afterwards Retreat [back] to Isle aux Noix.” Though they were ultimately able to drive the Indians from Saint-Jean, the rebel soldiers had suffered far more casualties than had

Johnson’s men.

Not all of the news Johnson received was promising, though. The Quebecois were once again, it seemed, busy agitating among the Indians of Kahnawake, telling them that the “Rebells would destroy their town” if they did not join the invading forces.79 What’s more, just as Johnson dispatched Daniel Claus to reassure the Kahnawakes, John

Campbell arrived in Montreal in his capacity as Indian agent for Quebec. Johnson’s difficulties could not have come at a worse time, for by September 20 the rebels had, according to the record of Indian transactions, been “in many places Joyned by the

Perfidious Canadians.” Upon seeing the Quebecois defect to the rebels, the Indians

“almost all withdrew discontented and unwilling to Credit any further promises of aid.”

Thus weakened, and with its governor marching to Quebec, Montreal was ultimately forced to surrender on November 13. Outraged, Johnson promised to travel to London to seek redress for his grievances against Carleton, declaring that the governor’s actions,

79 “Records of Indian Transactions, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:98.

72 coupled with “Campbells powers as Agent to Canada,” had “occasion[ed] difficultys that would effectually obstruct the service[s]” Johnson wished to render to the empire.80

While Johnson traveled across the Atlantic, Carleton made his way to the city of

Quebec. The situation he faced upon reaching that city was, to say the least, not ideal. A force of Continental Army soldiers had marched under the command of Colonel Benedict

Arnold through the borderlands between Quebec and Maine, there to be joined by the forces under Montgomery fresh from their victory at Montreal. After a month spent endeavoring to starve Carleton’s forces out of the city, Montgomery ordered an ultimately failed multi-pronged attack against the surrounding on December

31. In the wake of the rebel defeat, which left Montgomery dead and Arnold wounded,

Carleton chose to wait for further reinforcements rather than pressing his momentary advantage.81 Those reinforcements arrived in May of 1776 under General John Burgoyne.

Newly strengthened by Burgoyne’s troops, Carleton drove Arnold to retreat toward upstate New York with the remainder of his forces. Within a few short weeks, those forces had been almost entirely expelled from the province of Quebec. During that time, the Indians of the province had, as much as possible, largely remained neutral, alienated as they were by Carleton’s actions in the years before and during the invasion itself.

There was, however, one notable exception: the Abenakis of Odanak, who aided in the capture of the rebel-occupied outpost at The Cedars (Les Cèdres) in the final weeks of the

80 “Records of Indian Transactions, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., vol. 2:99. Johnson reiterated his frustration with the interference of local authorities in the operation of the Indian department in his review of the Indian affairs the next year. See “A General Review of the Northern Confederacy and the Department for Indian Affairs, 1776,” Public Records Office (PRO) 30/55/3, f. 280, TNA. He even complained of his difficulties in his record of expenses for the latter half of 1775 submitted to the Treasury Department. See Guy Johnson to the Lords of the Treasury, March 20, BHQ, vol. 2, f. 147, TNA. 81 Carleton’s decision no doubt alarmed his superiors in London, who were informed shortly after the December 31st attack by sources in New York that the city of Quebec could not withstand another concerted assault. “Extract of a Letter from New York,” February 27, 1776, BHQ, vol. 2, f. 129, TNA.

73 campaign. Carleton’s choice to favor them over the Mohawks of Akwesasne had at last paid dividends, albeit in a relatively minor fashion.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Carleton soon discovered, however, that such dividends were rare. Despite his success in driving the Continental Army out of the province, the campaign proved ultimately fatal for his plans in the province by laying bare the true extent to which many of the Quebecois’ loyalties to the British Empire remained uncertain. That uncertainty was revealed shortly after the rebel forces’ retreat, when Carleton ordered a committee composed of François Baby, Gabriel Taschereau, and Jenkin Williams to travel throughout the province in order to investigate the impact of the invasion on the overall readiness of the Quebecois militia. The report the committee issued upon its return was anything but encouraging. In almost every community they encountered, Baby,

Taschereau, and Williams discovered that Quebecois militiamen had cooperated extensively with rebel forces, and many officers had even gone so far as to accept commissions in the Continental Army. Moreover, even when they had not assisted the invading rebels in any outright military fashion, many had chosen to work behind enemy lines to sway the loyalties of their neighbors. In the parish of L’Ange Gardien, for example, the habitant Nicolas Lecomte had “used all the means in his power to prove his sympathy to the rebels.”82 Moreover, to an extent that was certainly alarming to all those that read the report, Lecomte’s case was by far more the rule than the exception.

In consequence of cases like Lecomte’s, the committee’s travels throughout the province quickly became mired in the efforts of its members to reimpose British authority

82 François Baby et. al., Québec during the American Invasion, 1775-1776: The Journal of François Baby, Gabriel Taschereau, and Jenkin Williams (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005), 9.

74 in local communities by reforming the Quebecois militias compromised by the rebel invasion. In every community they encountered, the committee members ordered residents to assemble either in the town square or local church, where they “arranged for the public submission [of the Quebecois] to their Sovereign.”83 Anyone that was found negligent in their duties was punished accordingly, and were often removed from the militia rolls entirely. The severest penalties, however, were reserved for those like

Nicolas Lecomte, who had actively supported the rebel forces in Quebec. Such men were brought before the committee publicly to “sweat in front of the whole parish” while an executioner “burned the said commission” they had received from the Continental Army.

They were then “declared . . . unworthy” and “barred . . . from ever holding any position for the government or the parish.”84 The import of such punishments seems clear. By ordering an executioner to burn the rebel commissions, the committee members intended to convey the sense that anyone guilty of aiding the rebels would be forced to undergo a sort of social death. In their meetings with local militias, then, the committee established the consequences of disloyalty in dramatic fashion. Men like Lecomte were not only openly humiliated for their wavering loyalties but were barred from the kind of public activities that helped them to maintain their connection to their communities. The consequences of rebellion were thus laid bare for all to see. Anyone that betrayed British authority in Quebec would find themselves bereft of the comfort found in local institutions and the personal relationships upon which those institutions were founded.

With the evidence of the Quebecois’ uncertain loyalties before him, Carleton did his best over the next year and a half to bolster those loyalties during his preparations for

83 Baby et. al., 3. 84 Baby et. al., 9.

75 the planned invasion of New York (which would ultimately become the Saratoga

Campaign of 1777). Despite his efforts, however, the Quebecois proved just as chary of mustering for militia service as they ever had. Carleton himself was sure of the cause, writing to Lord George Germaine, Secretary of State, in July of 1777 to complain that the ministry’s appointment of Burgoyne, an officer of an inferior rank to his own, to lead the southern invasion had weakened his ability to enforce obedience to his order in the province. It is no “Matter of Wonder,” he wrote, “that I should meet with Difficulties” since I am “without either Laws, Strength in Government, or even Your Lordship’s

Countenance, as Minister, to assist me.” “Your Lordship has deprived me of” such, he complained, “by appointing, in your Pleasure, an Inferior Officer to the Command of this

Army.”85 Once more, Carleton suggested, metropolitan officials had threatened the stability of the empire by meddling in the jurisdiction of a colonial officer. It was, apparently, a level of interference that Carleton could not stand to bear.86

Carleton expressed his frustrations with the metropole in a variety of ways, most frequently in his correspondence home. Perhaps most tellingly, however, was Carleton’s chosen dress at a ball celebrating the second anniversary of the 1775 Battle of Quebec thrown by the seigneurial officers of the Quebec militia. On that occasion, Carleton appeared at the ball not in the uniform of the British military, but that of the militia

85 Guy Carleton to Lord Germain, July 10, 1777, in Cruikshank, ed., 2:228. 86 Carleton’s response to the appointment of Burgoyne may have been an overreaction, given that metropolitan officials characterized Burgoyne’s position in relation to Carleton as second-in-command to the governor in their correspondence with other military leaders in North America. See Lord Germain to William Howe, February 1, 1776, BHQ, vol. 2, f. 117 TNA. Indeed, according to the ministry, the reason for Burgoyne’s appointment as head of the invasion southwards was that Carleton’s presence was indispensable in maintaining order in Quebec. The ministry expressed the utmost faith in Carleton’s influence over the inhabitants of Quebec in general and in his ability to recruit a suitable number of Quebecois and Indians for Burgoyne’s expedition, which it considered essential to the campaign’s success. It also instructed Burgoyne to consult with Carleton on all details of his plans for the invasion. See Lord Germain to Guy Carleton, March 26, 1777, BHQ, vol. 4., f. 461, TNA.

76 itself.87 In the end, it seemed, Carleton had come to identify closely with his province and the cause célèbre for which he had fought so long. His identification was so strong, in fact, that he was apparently willing to abandon (even for just a moment) the regalia of that empire in favor of a uniform that publicly demonstrated his commitment to Quebec and its peoples. Such gestures may have salved Carleton’s wounded pride, but it did little to change his superiors’ minds in London, who allowed the invasion to move forward in the fall of 1777 under Burgoyne’s command. Confirmed in his opinion by Burgoyne’s defeat at the in early September and thoroughly disgusted with the metropole’s administration of the empire, Carleton resigned his position as governor of

Quebec in protest.

Carleton would not leave the province until the fall of 1778, however. When he did, his exit was accompanied by much fanfare, the details of which were reported in the

August 6 issue of the Quebec Gazette. Carleton left his quarters in the early afternoon, accompanied on his walk to the docks of Quebec by the principal officials and gentlemen of the province. The streets were lined with the men of the British and Quebecois militia, under arms. Just as his barge to the frigate that would take him back to Britain pushed off from the quay, he “got up and took an indiscriminate Farewell of the multitude on the beach.” Carleton’s expression as he did so, the Gazette reported, “seem’d to indicate regret.”88 That regret was not without cause. Carleton returned to Quebec shortly after the colonial rebellion ended. By then, most of the institutions he had constructed to govern

Quebec over almost a decade had been dismantled.

87 Quebec Gazette, January 8, 1778, in Cruikshank, ed., 2:199-200. 88 Quebec Gazette, August 6, 1778, in Cruikshank, ed., 2:52.

77 The fact that this was the case was in large part a result of Carleton’s own struggles to secure Quebecois loyalties over the course of his term as governor. In particular, the failure of the Quebecois militia to muster in force to defend British governance in the province during the 1775 rebel invasion had convinced metropolitan officials that their Francophone subjects represented a threat to imperial security. For decades Britons had defined themselves in opposition to France and its culture and thus perceived their empire’s victory in the Seven Years’ War as evidence of their superiority over that culture. The practicalities of governing a conquered French populace had driven

Carleton, however, to treat with his empire’s longtime enemies as allies rather than opponents. As long as that decision appeared to bear fruit, Carleton’s metropolitan superiors were willing to tolerate his approach. Because of the 1775 Quebec Campaign, that fruit withered on the vine. The Quebecois had proven themselves disloyal at a time when loyalty was at a premium. They were, in British eyes, an enemy within, a foil once more for what it meant to be Britons.

78 Chapter 2: Command and Supply: Rebel Diplomacy, Military Necessity, and the

Struggle for Quebecois and Indian Allies, 1760-1779

The leaders of the colonial rebellion against British rule in North America struggled with many of the same issues that their metropolitan government had over the previous decade. Like the British Empire the “United Colonies” faced the daunting task of governing a disparate collection of political entities with ill-defined boundaries, a task that raised fundamental questions regarding authority and loyalty. In the empire after the

Seven Years’ War, those questions had translated into a growing conflict among British imperial officials for control of the province of Quebec and the western borderlands of the empire. For the rebel government during the American War for Independence, a very similar set of questions produced utter confusion.

The British Empire that reigned in Quebec from 1759 onwards had more time and resources than the colonial rebellion could hope to marshal sixteen years later. Without a decade plus to recognize and negotiate the nuances of the cultural divide between themselves and the inhabitants of Quebec and the borderlands, rebel leaders proved largely incapable of crafting policies towards those inhabitants that held any real appeal for their target audiences. Instead, they succeeded in defining themselves and their new nation in terms with very little attraction for North American communities outside of their own. Without the vast wealth of a trans-Atlantic empire, meanwhile, those same leaders also proved largely incapable of conducting the war effort along the exceedingly ambitious lines those definitions required. Rather, as time went on, the difficulties inherent to funding and supplying a military conflict across a vast geographic expanse made those definitions increasingly complicated. The result was a rebel government (the

79 Continental Congress) with a national vision that was at odds with the nature of the war itself and a set of military officials whose endeavors to find the middle ground between the two had profound consequences for the conduct of the rebellion and the future of the nation that drove it forward.

In the north that official for much of the war was General , wealthy landowner, former quartermaster, occasional delegate to Congress, and on-again, off-again head of the Northern Department. Over the course of the colonial rebellion,

Schuyler’s attempts to implement Congressional policies toward the Quebecois and

Indians collided head on with the difficulties he experienced coordinating the complex bureaucratic mechanisms necessary to supply and command military efforts in a department that encompassed nearly 100,000 square miles of territory. This collision had real implications for the potential of the Quebecois and Indians to ally themselves to the rebellion. Absent Congressional leaders willing or able to attune themselves to those groups’ interests or military officials with the wherewithal to conform to those interests when they did recognize them, the Quebecois and Indians eventually sought more advantageous relationships.

Britishness

Those difficulties were a distant blip on the horizon in 1759, however. Indeed, when the city of Quebec fell to British forces that year, no one was happier than the inhabitants of the thirteen Anglo colonies to the south. “No one can rejoice more sincerely than I do on the Reduction of Canada,” colonial agent Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter to Henry Home, Lord Kames, in January of 1760, and “this, not merely as I am

80 a Colonist, but as I am a Briton.”1 After all, he confided to Home, “I have long been of

Opinion that the Foundations of the future Grandeur and Stability of the British Empire lie in America.”2 Franklin was by no means alone in this opinion. In a sermon in Boston

(Franklin’s hometown) in October of 1759, for example, the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew voiced in public what Franklin had communicated in private. “We may reasonably expect that this country,” Mayhew declared to his listeners, “will, by the continued blessing of heaven, in another century or two become a mighty empire.”3 “I do not mean an independent one,” he assured his audience, but “in numbers” it will be “little inferior perhaps to the greatest in Europe, and in felicity” it will be inferior “to none.”4

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania physician Paul Jackson, in his “Ode on Peace” read at the May commencement for the College of Philadelphia (founded in part by Franklin in 1755), called for “Britain’s glory [to] still increase” and “Her fame immortal be.”5 That glory and fame, he wrote, would be sustained by the empire’s “Sons [who] make War to purchase Peace” and “conquer to set free.”6 For colonists like Franklin, Mayhew, and

Jackson, then, the implications of Britain’s conquest of Quebec was clear. The empire could now proceed unchecked across North America with the French threat to the north thoroughly diminished.

1 Franklin to Home, January 3, 1760, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Doc. 624148, American Philosophical Society & Yale University. 2 Franklin to Home, January 3, 1760, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Doc. 624148, American Philosophical Society & Yale University. 3 Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, sermon, Boston, October 25, 1759, Early American Imprints: Doc. #8417, American Antiquarian Society (AAS). 4 Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, sermon, Boston, October 25, 1759, Early American Imprints: Doc. #8417, AAS. 5 Paul Jackson, “Ode on Peace,” 1763, Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800, Doc. #9484, AAS. 6 Paul Jackson, “Ode on Peace,” 1763, Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800, Doc. #9484, AAS.

81 The link colonists like Franklin, Mayhew, and Jackson made between the conquest of Quebec and the expansion of the British Empire was rooted in decades of warfare pitting European colonists and their Indian allies against each other for dominance in North America. For much of the colonial period preceding the outbreak of the colonial rebellion, particularly during the French and Indian Wars between 1688 and

1763, the Quebecois and their indigenous allies were considered the most imminent threats to British colonial settlement on the North American continent.7 The much- publicized violence of attacks like the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts during

Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) by a combined force of French soldiers and Indians from the Abenakis, Iroquois, Wyandots, and Pocumtucs only reinforced and further fueled such fears.8 These fears contributed to the rise of an emerging British national and imperial identity that was embraced by many colonists in settlements along the Atlantic seaboard over the course of the century.9 In Britain, this identity was expressed primarily through anti-Catholic rhetoric, a dominant intellectual trend that was born in the English

Reformation and formally systematized as the foundation of imperial policy during the

Glorious Revolution of 1688.10 On the other side of the Atlantic, this rhetoric was

7 For an analysis of the role of the French and Indian Wars in the construction of British colonial identities, see Ann M. Little, Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 8 For an examination of the Deerfield raid, see Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). 9 For an overview of this process, termed “Anglicization” in the tradition of works by John Murrin and, later, T.H. Breen, see John M. Murrin, "Anglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial Massachusetts" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1966) and T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). See also the recent festschrift dedicated to Murrin, Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman, eds., Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 10 See Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

82 complicated and enhanced by the growing racialization of British colonists.11 This racialization was driven by the construction of a localized social hierarchy built on a shared conviction that ethnic groups like American Indians and enslaved Africans were inherently inferior to colonists who more and more frequently came to identify themselves in terms of ‘whiteness.’ As this conviction merged with the simultaneous rise of colonists’ sense of ‘Britishness,’ the perceived threat of French and Indian alliances became an ever-present fact of life in the British Atlantic colonies.

The perceived importance of this threat was mediated considerably by the British military conquest of Quebec during the Seven Years’ War.12 With the passage of the

Quebec Act in 1774 extending the territorial limits of Quebec into western lands claimed by a number of colonial governments along the Atlantic seaboard and permitting the free practice of Catholicism in the north, however, British colonial fears rose once more with renewed urgency.13 Colonists operating within the context of almost a decade of metropolitan and taxation quickly convinced themselves that a ministry that

11 In a seminal essay on the formation of American identity, Murrin argued that early expressions of national identity in the United States were rooted in celebrations of the federal Constitution. See “A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Richard R. Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward Carlos Carter (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 333-49. This narrative has been somewhat complicated, however, by the work of David Silverman in his essay for Anglicizing America, cited above, on the role of race and racism in the move toward independence. See David J. Silverman, “Racial Walls: Race and the Emergence of American White Nationalism,” in Anglicizing America, 181-204. For more general overviews of the development of racial thought in the Americas, see Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963); Yehudi O. Webster, The Racialization of America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992); Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996). 12 For an overview of the British conquest of French Canada and its aftermath, see Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 13 See Vernon Creviston, The Quebec Act: Politics, Religion, Territory, and the Rejection of the British Monarchy in the American Colonies (MA thesis, California State University, Fresno, 2009).

83 was evidently hostile to colonial interests might wield the northern province, its inhabitants, and their former indigenous allies for its own presumably ‘tyrannical’ ends.14

This conviction can be readily found in the language used by members of the

Continental Congress during the congressional debates surrounding the Quebec Act in

October of 1774. Massachusetts representative was particularly vocal in his opposition to the act, comparing the Quebecois to the “Goths and Vandals” that

“overthrew the roman Empire.” The act represented a “union of feudal Law and Romish

Superstition,” he told his listeners during the debates, and was a “danger to us all.” With the ‘Goths and Vandals’ at the English colonies’ gates, he asserted, they would soon be

“an House on fire.” By using such language, Adams expressed British colonial fears that had existed for much of the previous century. With such fears to fuel their interpretations of the act, its implications were clear in British colonial minds: the Quebecois menace would grow unchecked under metropolitan rule, leaving the colonies to its south alarmingly insecure. 15

There were also more immediate, and more tangible, concerns at play in British colonists’ preoccupation with the Quebec Act as tensions with the metropole continued to grow. Quebec’s expanded borders may have encompassed much of the known continent at the time, but they certainly didn’t allow Great Britain to control that territory. The bulk of European claims to North American territory in this period were illusory at best, and

British forts like Michilimackinac and La Baye were often more like eighteenth-century

14 See, for example, “ to John Langdon, October 5, 1774,” vol. 1, Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, 25 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1976-2000); “John Adams’ Notes for a Speech in Congress, October 15-17?, 1774,” vol. 1, Smith et al. eds; “James Duane’s Notes of Debates, October 15-17?, 1774,” vol. 1, Smith et. al. eds; “Edmund Pendleton to Joseph Chew, June 15, 1775,” vol. 1, Smith et al., eds; and “Richard Henry Lee to Francis Lightfoot Lee, May 21, 1775,” vol. 1, Smith et al., eds. 15 “John Adams’ Notes for a Speech in Congress,” October 15-17?, 1774, vol. 1, Smith et al., eds.

84 shopping malls for local Indians than they were military outposts. But what Quebec’s larger borders did offer was increased access and new opportunities for persuasion. With outposts as far west as modern-day Wisconsin, British agents from Quebec could tap into diplomatic networks extending across the continent, allowing them to potentially rely on indigenous auxiliaries from thousands of miles away to wreak havoc on the eastern colonies. Perhaps more importantly, they could combine those auxiliaries with Quebecois militias and British regulars, march down the Hudson Valley, and cut the colonies in half.

Because Boston was largely seen as the epicenter of the rebellion, cutting it off from the rest of the colonies would have, in most minds during the period, spelled the end of resistance to British imperial policies. Colonial leaders were thus not only primed after a century of Anglo-French warfare on the frontier to think of Quebec as the root of all danger, they had very real reason to believe that securing the northern province was essential to the survival of their resistance to the British regime.

So, with the outbreak of actual hostilities in the spring of the next year, the leaders of a movement that was rapidly becoming a widespread colonial rebellion almost immediately focused their attention on diplomatic efforts to the north and west. The fate of each, they believed, was contingent upon the success of the other. Without support from the north, rebellious colonists could never hope to secure alliances with indigenous groups many rebels assumed would follow the counsel of Quebecois colonists.16 Absent such alliances, those groups could potentially take part in attacks against colonial settlements, a potential that resurrected memories of French and Indian violence that had

16 For an examination of French-Indian relations in the period preceding the Revolutionary War, see Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

85 only recently been buried. Thus, for Congressional leaders the Quebecois and Indians were linked not only culturally, but strategically as well.

Before the Invasion

To counter this conjoined threat would require the assistance of rebel-leaning individuals with influence in the north who either had already established strong connections to indigenous communities or had the resources and backgrounds necessary to do so. This was a particularly tall order in the north, where affairs had long been shaped by the conflict between Sir Guy Carleton, Sir William Johnson, and their respective allies. With that in mind, Congressional leaders appointed New York delegate

Phillip Schuyler as head of the Northern Department. This choice was informed not only by the fact that Schuyler had long opposed the Johnson family during his time in the New

York colonial assembly, but also by his kinship connection to Colonel .17

Colonel Schuyler had been an influential voice in local affairs with the Iroquois during his time as the first mayor of Albany and later governor of New York in the early eighteenth century.18 During his time dealing with the Iroquois, he came to be known by the name Queder, a label produced by the struggle of Iroquoian speakers to pronounce labial consonants.19 Over half a century later the colonel’s great nephew, the newly minted General Schuyler, deliberately endeavored to wield his antecedent’s legacy as a weapon in his own cause, even going so far as to refer to himself as Queder in treaty

17 See “Hugh Wallace to William Johnson, January 7, 1769,” 6:571 in William Johnson, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-1965); “John Wetherhead to William Johnson, January 9, 1769,” 6:574 in Sullivan, ed; and “William Johnson to Philip Schuyler, January 17, 1769,” 6:590 in Sullivan, ed. 18 See Francis Jennings, The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 250. 19 See Jennings, Iroquois Diplomacy, 250.

86 councils with Iroquois representatives.20 By thus demonstrating his familial bona fides,

Schuyler worked to establish a firmer connection with the Iroquois that might eventually be exploited to gain the Confederacy’s support against the British, particularly as

Congressional plans to invade Quebec became more of a reality.

As Schuyler quickly discovered, however, his task would require substantially more effort than simply resting on his family’s laurels. In his very first message to the

Continental Congress on June 28, 1775 after his return to New York, Schuyler listed swaying Quebecois and Indian loyalties toward the rebel cause as his first priority. “I have prepared a letter which I hope to forward to-day to col. Hinman [rebel commander at Ticonderoga],” he wrote, and “I have pointedly urged the necessity of gaining intelligence from Canada, & cultivating a good understanding with that people and the

Indians.” “Too much dispatch cannot be used,” he continued, “to counteract” the threat of an invading force from the north. Such a force would be, he concluded, “an evil of the most alarming nature.”21

Based on the intelligence Schuyler received on a regular basis from visitors to

Quebec returning south, that perceived evil was rapidly becoming a reality. A

“gentleman” returned from Montreal on June 14 recounted with foreboding that the commander in that city had “received orders to make provisions for 300 Indians who were soon expected from the remote tribes,” a vague term frequently used during the period to describe indigenous groups as far away as the Ojibwes in the Great Lakes

20 See, for example, “German Flats Treaty with the Six Nations, August 15-September 1, 1775.” in Maryly Barton. Penrose, Indian Affairs Papers, American Revolution (Franklin Park, NJ: Liberty Bell Associates, 1981), 6-37. 21 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, June 28, 1775,” Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 1775-81 in Papers of the Continental Congress (PCC), M247, Reel 189, Item 170, 1:1-2, National Archives, Washington, D.C..

87 region and Lakotas in the present-day Midwest.22 Moreover, though Schuyler believed that the Quebecois would not join with the British “unless compelled by force,” there were reports that the British were arriving at just that extremity.23 The governor of

Quebec, Sir Guy Carleton, had evidently threatened to set fire to the town of Montreal when its militia refused to muster, while his Indian agent, Luc de la Corne, had suggested hanging half a dozen of the town’s inhabitants as an alternative.24

Schuyler’s fears of an alliance between British, Indian, and Quebecois forces thus seemed more than justified, and, what’s more, there seemed little he could do to defend against those forces should they make their way southward. In anticipation of that eventuality, Schuyler chose to venture to Fort Ticonderoga a month after his return to

New York in order to inspect the rebel troops that had mustered there. Ticonderoga is primarily known for its capture shortly after the war began by the , a militia raised in the pre-war period to fend off efforts by New Hampshire and New

York to lay claim to the territory of what would become (known then as the

New Hampshire Grants). Ticonderoga was situated on the edge of Lake Champlain and commanded the route between the lower thirteen colonies and Quebec with a large collection of artillery. Hoping that their efforts might encourage the Continental Congress to recognize The Grants’ status as independent from New Hampshire and New York, the

22 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, July 11, 1775,” PCC, Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 1:21. 23 “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, July 18, 1775,” in The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2007-). 24 “Examination of Gerrit Refeboom, July 15, 1775,” PCC, Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 1:37.

88 Green Mountain Boys under Colonels and Connecticuter Benedict Arnold seized the fort on May 9, 1775.25

In the intervening period between the fort’s capture by the Green Mountain Boys and Schuyler’s arrival two months later, chaos reigned. During the capture itself, Arnold had briefly disrupted the plan by attempting to seize control of the attack from Allen over the objections of the militiamen themselves. It was only when Allen agreed to allow

Arnold to march beside him that the attack moved forward. Afterwards, Arnold had claimed command of the fort as the leader of the forces that had seized it, a position disputed by Colonel Benjamin Hinman, who arrived shortly after the fort’s capture at the head of a thousand men from to reinforce the rebel garrison. Arnold’s and

Hinman’s dispute had, in Schuyler’s words, caused the “Greatest Confusion.”26 “Some have taken the Liberty to disband Troops,” he complained, “others refused to serve unless this or that particular Person Commanded.”27 Eventually, ever in search of a higher command, Arnold chose to find greener pastures, travelling to the rebel camps at the siege of Boston, where he convinced George Washington to place him at the head of an expeditionary force into Quebec through present-day Maine to support the main body of rebel troops that would invade the north via the St. Lawrence River Valley.28

25 For more information on the Grants’ struggle for statehood and Ethan Allen’s role in the process, see John J. Duffy, and H. Nicholas Muller, Inventing Ethan Allen (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2014). 26 “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, July 15, 1775,” in Crackel et al., eds. Ticonderoga wasn’t the only post where confusions abounded regarding the officer in command. When George Washington initially arrived to the siege of Boston, for example, Ensign Nathaniel Morgan recorded in his journal that the general was “Chief of Connecticut forces.” “Journal of Ensign Nathaniel Morgan,” in Orderly Book and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men While Taking Part in the American Revolution, 1775-1778 (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1899), 101, Society of the Cincinnati Library (974.6 C752h), Washington, D.C. (SOC). 27 “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, July 15, 1775,” in Crackel et al., eds. 28 “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, July 15, 1775,” in Crackel et al., eds; For more information on Arnold’s expedition to Quebec, see Joseph Ware, Journal of an Expedition against Quebec, in 1775, under Col. Benedict Arnold, ed. Justin Winsor and W. B. Trask (Boston: T. Prince, 1852), SOC (973.3313

89 Schuyler arrived to Ticonderoga shortly after the dispute between Arnold and

Hinman had been resolved. When the Green Mountain Boys captured the fort in May, they had a little over one hundred men, a feat that many at the time considered fairly impressive. A perhaps more impressive feat, however, was Schuyler’s singlehanded capture of the fort from his own men two months later. “About ten last night I arrived at the Landing pla(ce) the north end of Lake George,” he wrote to Washington on July 18,

1775, and a “Centinel on being informed I was in the boat quitted his post to go and awake the guard, consisting of three men, in which he had no success.” “I walked up and came to another, a serjeant’s Guard,” he went on, and “here the centinel challenged, but suffered me to come up to him, the whole guard, like the first, in the soundest sleep.”

“With a penknife only,” he claimed incredulously, “I could have cut off both guards, and then have set fire to the blockhouse, destroyed the stores, and starved the people here.” “I hope Carlton, if he should be able to procure a body of Indians,” he concluded, “will not be in a hurry to pay us a visit.”29

W269); Ebenezer Tolman, Arnold's Expedition against Quebec, 1775-1776: The Diary of Ebenezer Wild, with a List of Such Diaries (Cambridge, MA: Justin Wilson, 1886), SOC (973.3313 T652); John Pierce, John Pierce: Journal by the Advance Surveyor with Col. Arnold on the March to Quebec, ed. Kenneth Roberts (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940), SOC (973.3313 P616); Kenneth Lewis Roberts, March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnolds Expedition, Compiled during the Writing of Arundel (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940); and Stephen Darley. Voices from a Wilderness Expedition: The Journals and Men of Benedict Arnolds Expedition to Quebec in 1775 (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2011). The Ware and Tolman journals (the Tolman journal being initially attributed to Ebenezer Wild) are part of a collection of accounts of the Arnold expedition authored collaboratively by privates in Samuel Ward’s company of the Rhode Island regiment under Christopher Greene. There has been considerable dispute as to the individual authorship of each over the years given their similarities. See “Ward Company Journals,” in Darley, cited above, 138-146. 29 “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, July 18, 1775,” in Crackel et al., eds. Lack of discipline was a common problem throughout the Continental Army in the early period of the war, and Washington himself dealt with dereliction of duty on a regular basis during the contemporaneous siege of Boston. Continental soldiers at the siege made frequent reference to such issues in their diaries. See, for example, Sergeant Jonathan Burton’s orderly book while he was stationed at the rebel camp at Winter Hill, where he records his commanding officers complaining of troops who “Rambel from or lay out of their Quarters contrary to Repated orders on this head.” Jonathan Burton, Diary and Orderly Book of Sergeant Jonathan Burton of Wilton, N.H.: While in Service in the Army on Winter Hill, Dec. 10, 1775-Jan. 26, 1776, and of the Same Soldier as Lieutenant Jonathan Burton, While in the Canada Expedition at Mount Independence, Aug. 1,

90 Americanness

With rebel defenses against an invasion from the north in such dire straits, the question then became how to mediate its impact should it actually occur. Short of instilling the requisite discipline in rebel troops and providing them with all the necessary supplies and munitions (an unlikely possibility given the sheer disorganization of the

Continental Army and rebel government at the time), the most obvious answer was to pull any invading force apart at its seams by swaying Quebecois and Indian loyalties to the rebel cause. Rebel leaders’ efforts to do so were shaped by their own contemporaneous efforts to unite the disparate rebel colonies under the banner of a new identity as Americans rather than Britons.30

Not unlike the Yankee of Doodle lore, rebel leaders chose to take pride in a label that had originally been intended as one of derision. Almost since the beginning of colonization itself, habitation in the Americas had been seen by thinkers in the metropole as the cause of cultural declension.31 Prolonged contact with the American environment and its inhabitants would, they believed, ultimately drive colonists to adopt the practices and lifestyles of the ‘Indian savages,’ a belief that was in European minds borne out by the all-too-frequent decision of colonists to assimilate into indigenous communities.32

1776-Nov. 29, 1776, ed. Isaac W. Hammond (Concord, NH: Republican Press Assoc., 1885), 16, SOC (973.38 B964). See also the “Orderly Book of Capt William Coit’s Company,” in Orderly Book and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men, cited above, 1-98. 30 See T. H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising,” The Journal of American History 84, no. 1 (1997): 13-39; and Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 31 See Michael Zuckerman, “Identity in British America: Unease in Eden,” in Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. Nicholas P. Canny and Anthony Pagden, 115–58 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); and Michal J. Rozbicki. “The Curse of Provincialism: Negative Perceptions of Colonial American Plantation Gentry,” The Journal of Southern History 63, no. 4 (1997): 727–52. 32 See James Axtell. The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

91 Colonists themselves, however, developed an alternative theory. Rather than being a source of declension, they posited, the American environment and the daily toil of life in the colonies re-instilled a perceived purity in the Euro-American spirit that had been abandoned in Europe proper under pressure from urbanization.33 Free from the presumed riot, confusion, corruption, and filth of life in European cities, they argued, colonists were able to lead simple, moral lives in the fresh air of North America. This allowed them to be, according to them, even better Britons than the British, since they were leading lives that had been lost in the metropole as it underwent massive societal changes in the eighteenth century. When searching for a new identity to replace their British one in the first year of the War for Independence, then, it was this theory that rebel leaders seized upon.

As Britons, rebel leaders were traitors to their country and their crown who threatened to tear their beloved empire apart at the seams; as Americans, they stood united against a debauched and bloated regime thousands of miles away. For rebel leaders, then, to be American was to be something new, something with promise, something with a future. To be American was also, however, not without its logical inconsistences. If something about habitation on the American continent made one special, it was something to which the non-Anglo inhabitants of North America also had access. What, then, to do with groups like the Quebecois and Indians that had not joined the rebellion but could still claim status as Americans? The answer was not a simple one.

British colonists’ experiences fighting in the French and Indian Wars had, after all, served as the foundation of their identity for well over a century. Because of those

33 See Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

92 experiences, British colonists defined themselves in opposition to others in terms of religion and race. They were, in their minds, frontline soldiers in the fight to defend

Protestant liberty against a horde of tyrannical Papists to the north and vicious ‘savages’ to the west.

This self-conception collided head on with the necessity rebel leaders faced in the first year of the War for Independence of bringing the Quebecois and Indians into the fold in order for the rebellion to survive. Their answer to this conundrum was to invite those groups into the new union, but only on certain conditions: namely, that the

Quebecois and Indians adopt Anglo-colonial practices and assimilate into the new

American society rebel leaders hoped to create. After all, rebel leaders posited, these groups were inhabitants of the same North American continent that made British colonists so unique in their own minds. In an era that promised immense changes, they reasoned, their age-old enemies might yet be molded into something like themselves, and thus share in the bounty that their common bond as inhabitants of the same continent offered.34 Of course, the likelihood of that bond being realized through a continental union was influenced considerably by the stereotyped assumptions British colonists had constructed during decades of violent warfare with such communities. The result was

34 See James David Drake, The Nation's Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). In the early years of the Revolutionary War, Congressional leaders’ visions of a continental union were complemented by simultaneous efforts to construct an American national identity upon a foundation of stereotyped notions of “Indianness.” See, in particular, Philip Joseph Deloria. Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 20; 22. For additional expositions on the subject, see Richard Slotkin. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Robert F. Berkhofer. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Knopf, 1978); Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1995); Jill Lepore. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf, 1998); and Alfred Fabian Young. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999). [Taylor was earlier than Deloria and Lepore was in the same year, so I would just keep it simple and list the similar works without too much commentary.]

93 twofold. On the one hand, rebel leaders’ attempts to persuade Quebecois and indigenous communities to support and potentially join their new continental union were mediated by their conviction that such groups could only become full members of that union if they were persuaded to adopt a more Anglicized way of life. On the other, those groups’ hesitation to do so was interpreted within the context of rebel leaders’ preconceptions regarding each: the Quebecois hesitated because they had become too accustomed to

‘oppression,’ the Indians because they were too ‘savage’ to recognize the benefits of the offer.

This tension wove itself into the very fabric of rebel leaders’ earliest messages to the Quebecois and Indians after the rebellion began in earnest in the spring of 1775. What is particularly noteworthy about both sets of messages is their similarity in terms of core content. Both are characterized by three goals: the first, to justify the rebellion; the second, to persuade their audiences of the common cause they shared with rebels as inhabitants of the same continent; and the third, to convince them of the manifest benefits of joining the new colonial union. Where the messages differ is in the language used to communicate them. Each was carefully crafted to appeal to what rebel leaders perceived as their audiences’ cultural sensibilities.

Congressional leaders’ first message to the Quebecois, in October of 1774, is particularly representative. Assuming that their audience had little in the way of practical knowledge regarding British representative government, the Continental Congress did its best to explain that system to their audience in language they believed would be readily understood. After explaining the various facets of that political system, they revealed what they obviously considered to be their ace in the hole. “What would your

94 countryman, the immortal , have said to such a plan of domination” as that of the British Ministry, they asked. “Hear his words, with an intenseness of thought suited to the importance of the subject,” they demanded. “Apply [his] decisive maxims, sanctified by the authority of a name which all Europe reveres” to your own situation, they urged, and by “exerting the natural sagacity of Frenchmen” you will find that the

British Ministry is intent upon “burying your lives, liberty, and property.” “You have been conquered into liberty, if you act as you ought,” they concluded, “we only invite you . . . to unite with us in one social compact, formed on the generous principles” for which we stand. “All the rest of North-America” are “you unalterable friends,” they wrote, and “your province is the only link wanting, to compleat the bright and strong chain of union.”35

Congressional leaders’ first message to an indigenous group, delivered by Philip

Schuyler to the Iroquois in August of the next year in Albany, made a similar plea, albeit with drastically different vocabulary. “In a great council . . . held at Lancaster in

Pennsylvania,” Schuyler began, “Cannassateego [an Onandaga leader in the 1740s] spoke to us, the white people, in these very terms.” “Never disagree, but preserve a strict friendship for one another,” Canasatego advised British colonists, for “we are a powerful confederacy, and if you observe the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power.” “Our forefathers rejoiced to hear Cannassateego speak these words” and “they sunk deep into their hearts,” Schuyler told the Iroquois, so that now “we thank the great God that we are all united.” He then turned to the crux of his plea. “We only advise you to deliberate with great caution” should the King ask for

35 Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 25 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1904-1937), 1:110-12.

95 your assistance against us, he declared, “for if the King’s troops take away our property, and destroy us, who are of the same blood with themselves, what can you, who are

Indians, expect from them afterwards?” Rebel colonists, on the other hand, he said, “live upon the same ground with you” and the “same island is our common birthplace.”36

Neither Schuyler’s speech to the Iroquois nor the Congressional message to the

Quebecois seem to have been received with any particular enthusiasm. Given the context within which their audiences would have interpreted them, it’s not hard to understand why. Congress’s assumption that the Quebecois would be unfamiliar with the character of British representative government or the political philosophies behind it was rooted in a profound misapprehension of the northern province’s experiences since the conquest of

1759. Since that time, the new French-speaking inhabitants of the British Empire had done much to familiarize themselves with the workings of the imperial system and metropolitan government. Indeed, according to legal historian Michel Morin, the seigneurial and merchant classes of the province demonstrated a steadily evolving knowledge of those workings through their readership of and engagement with the provincial capital’s newspaper the Quebec Gazette.37 In the Gazette, Morin argues, the

Quebecois (particularly elites) displayed a growing and increasingly nuanced comprehension of British political ideas and how they might be used to establish a place for themselves within the administration of the empire. That process resulted in a deliberate tradeoff. Though desirous of forming their own assembly, Quebecois elites

36 Colin G. Calloway and Alden T. Vaughan, eds., Revolution and Confederation, Vol. XVIII, Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789 (Bethesda, MD: University Publication of America, 1994), 9-14. 37 Michel Morin, “Constitutional Debates in French Canada, 1764-1774,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution, ed. Nathalie Des Rosiers, Patrick Macklem, and Peter C. Oliver, 47–82 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

96 understood that they were unlikely to receive representation in such a body as practicing

Catholics. So, instead, they had settled for the Quebec Act’s protection of French civil law and allowance of the free practice of Catholicism, a decision that enabled them to preserve a sizable portion of the influence they had enjoyed in the province prior to the conquest. The inhabitants of Quebec that Congressional leaders addressed were thus not only familiar with the political system those leaders so condescendingly explained but had already made their bed within it, Montesquieu or otherwise.

The Iroquois, meanwhile, were just as unlikely to respond positively to Schuyler’s speech, especially given its reference to Canasatego’s advice to colonial leaders. The

Onandaga leader had given that advice at the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, a set of agreements between the colonial agents and Iroquoian representatives that scholar James

Merrell has characterized as “weapons of conquest.” Upon signing the treaty documents,

Canasatego and the other Iroquois leaders at Lancaster in 1744 believed they were signing away their claim to the Shenandoah Valley along the western border of settled

Virginia (an area to which they had a tenuous claim at best anyway). Instead, Virginia’s agents had worded the treaty’s language in such a way that the Iroquois were putting their signatures to an agreement that acknowledged their cession of all lands within the territory claimed by the colony according to its original royal charter. Because that document gave Virginia the ability to claim land in North America that stretched “from sea to sea” the Treaty of Lancaster could thus be interpreted as a surrender of all lands between Virginia and the Pacific Ocean, an interpretation upon which colonists quickly seized in the treaty’s aftermath.38 The colonial government of Virginia soon began

38 James Hart Merrell, The Lancaster Treaty of 1744: With Related Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008), Kindle Location 781.

97 granting land in the Ohio Valley to speculators and colonists, land that was also claimed by the French Empire. The growing tension that ensued between Virginian colonists and

French forces in the Ohio Valley eventually erupted in the Seven Years’ War, a conflict that devastated Iroquoian communities when they chose to support their British colonial allies. Those allies then capitalized upon that vulnerability by convincing the Iroquois to definitively extinguish all of their claims to the land they had unknowingly ceded in 1744 at the Treaty of in 1768. By calling Canasatego’s speech at the Treaty of

Lancaster to mind, then, Schuyler and his Congressional superiors were reopening a relatively fresh wound. By doing so, they in effect reminded the Iroquois that colonists had a well-established history of prioritizing their own self-interest to the disadvantage of their indigenous allies.

It is also important to note that the exact extent to which rebel leaders were sincere in their desire to form a union with the Quebecois and Indians is debatable.

Indeed, in the very messages where they offered those groups membership in their new union, rebel leaders made sure to convey the implication that they were willing to respond with violence should those offers be rejected. In their message to the Quebecois, rebel leaders asked their audience to carefully consider the consequences of making their

“numerous and powerful neighbors” their “inveterate enemies” when they were such a

“small people.”39 Likewise, in his speech to the Iroquois, Philip Schuyler warned that the rebels were determined to “kill and destroy all those wicked men” they found “in arms against the peace” of the “United Colonies.”40 While Congressional leaders may have offered those groups membership in their new union, then, it is important to make clear

39 Ford et al., eds., 1:111. 40 Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 13.

98 that such offers were made only out of perceived necessity, and that the rebels were willing to use force if they perceived it as necessary as well. The fabric of the continental union rebel leaders held in their hearts was thus stitched together with exceedingly thin thread.

The Invasion

Before they could hope to stitch together a continental union, however, rebel leaders had first to bring the territories to their north and west into the fold, a task that ultimately offered little more than an education in their own limitations. Much of this education centered on a growing awareness of the issues inherent to supplying troops over extended distances, the lessons of which were learned by none better than Philip

Schuyler himself over the course of the campaign. In nearly every letter the general wrote to Congress, he complained of the difficulties he faced supplying the troops taking part in the northern invasion and throughout his department.

This began in the campaign’s earliest days. Shortly before Schuyler surrendered command of the expedition to General Richard Montgomery, he attempted to lay siege to

Fort Saint-Jean on September 6 but was forced to retreat to Île aux Noix on the Richelieu

River “having Neither Ordnance, Shells, or Ball proper for a formal siege.”41 Ten days later Schuyler chose to leave the Continental forces encamped at Île aux Noix suffering from what he described as a “barbarous complication of disorders,” traveling south under the belief that his ill health would only slow the invasion’s progress.42 As the rebel troops

41 Benjamin Trumbull, “A Concise Journal or Minutes of the Principal Movements Towards St. John’s of the Siege and Surrender of the Forts There 1775,” in Orderly Book and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men, cited above, 141. 42 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, September 25, 1775,” in Peter Force, ed., American Archives . . ., 4th series (Washington: M. St. Clair Clarke, 1837-1853), 3:796.

99 under Montgomery continued northwards to besiege Fort Saint-Jean in earnest, Schuyler settled into life at Fort Ticonderoga. From there, he hoped, he might be able to both receive more adequate medical attention and coordinate affairs between the Northern

Department and the northern invasion. This became especially important after the fall of

Saint-Jean and Montreal in succession and the advance of Montgomery’s troops toward the city of Quebec.

As the rebel troops in the northern province simultaneously settled into a siege of the capital and their new role as occupiers more and more of Schuyler’s attention turned towards the problem of supplying them. In his letters to Congress after arriving at

Ticonderoga, Schuyler urged his Congressional superiors to do likewise. The “anxiety I have suffered since my arrival here, lest the Army should starve,” he wrote to John

Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, on September 25, 1775, “not only retard[s] my cure, but have put me considerably back for some days past.”43 The “most scandalous inattention to the publick stores prevails in every part of the Army,” he wrote to Hancock again on November 20, “tents are left laying in the boats; axes, kettles, &c, lost; and every thing running into confusion.”44 “I am, in sentiment” that “it is necessary to send a quantity of provisions [to Quebec] immediately,” he echoed in yet another letter to Hancock on February 23 of the next year, “for I am morally sure that our cause will suffer.”45 Despite their urgency, however, Schuyler soon realized that his requests were failing to gain his superiors’ attention. They were, after all, in the midst not only of

43 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, September 25, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:796. 44 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, November 20, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:1617. For a description of the impact of the lack of supplies on rebel troops in Quebec see “Cornelius Van Slyck and Andrew Finck, Jr. to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., December 7, 1775,” in Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 1754-1818, MssCol 23873, 1:39, New York Public Library (NYPL). 45 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, February 23, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:1481.

100 overseeing the concurrent siege of Boston, but of attempting to author a working document for the governance of the United Colonies as well.

Knowing this to be the case, Schuyler requested the appointment of a congressional committee to investigate the conduct of the campaign by travelling northward in the hopes that seeing the problem for themselves might prompt more immediate action.46 After three and a half months Congress finally acquiesced, appointing a committee composed of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Samuel

Chase and Charles Carroll Jr. of Maryland to travel to Quebec and investigate the complaints made against the Continental Army there. Unfortunately for the committee, they arrived in the province just as that army had begun its headlong retreat back to the lower thirteen colonies in the face of British reinforcements under General John

Burgoyne. Ultimately, the committee’s reports on affairs in the north during this period came to form the basis of rebel explanations for their failure to gain the province.

These reports, written in May of 1776, made it clear that the blame for

Continental defeat should be laid squarely on the shoulders of Congressional leaders themselves. “It is impossible to give you a just idea of the lowness of the Continental credit here from the want of [provisions],” the committee informed John Hancock in one report, and the “few friends we have here, will scarce venture to exert themselves in promoting [our cause]” as a result. “Our Cause has a Majority of Enemies [and] the

Garrison [is] weak,” they wrote in another, and “Money cannot be had to support your

46 For Schuyler’s recommendations to Congress regarding a Committee to Canada, see “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, November 18, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:1596; “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, January 13, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:666-667; “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, February 23, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:1482.

101 Army here with Honor.” In short, they concluded, “we think it impossible to subsist your forces in Canada.”47

This view soon filtered its way into the personal letters of the delegates to

Congress, a move initiated by the members of the Committee to Quebec themselves. “We

[had] 4,000 Troops in Canada & not a Mouthful of food,” wrote Samuel Chase in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, while “our Army [was] naked” and “desperate.” “For the Love of your Country,” he pleaded, “cease the keen Encounter of your Tongues, discard your

Tongue Artillery . . . or We are undone.” This view was echoed by others shortly thereafter. Everyone was “seeking after a thousand Reasons of the miscarriages in

Canada,” wrote Connecticut representative William Williams to Commissary General

Joseph Trumbull, “while the Fault is in themselves, in neglecting & abandoning that

Army to inevitable Destruction.” This decision by many like Williams to lay the blame at the feet of Congress was one even John Adams himself adopted at times. A series of

“Disasters has happened [in Quebec],” he wrote in a letter to Archibald Bulloch, “partly owing I fear to the Indecision at Philadelphia.” This “Fluctuation of our Councils in the

Support and Prosecution” of the campaign, he continued in a message to Samuel Cooper,

“impaired our Credit with the Canadians, and prevented our officers and Men from procuring such Articles of Cloathing, Provisions and other necessaries as were wanted.”48

47 “Commissioners to Canada to John Hancock, May 1, 1776,” vol. 3, Smith et al., eds; “Commissioners to Canada to John Hancock, May 8, 1776,” vol. 3, Smith et al., eds; “Commissioners to Canada to John Hancock, May 17, 1776,” vol. 3, Smith et. al., eds. This characterization of the lack of supplies was echoed in soldiers’ accounts of the latter part of the campaign. See, for example, the “Journal of Bayze Wells,” in Orderly Book and Journals Kept by Connecticut Men, cited above, 267, where Wells complained that it was not “in the Power of man to give any idea of the Distresses” of the soldiers “Laying on the Ground nothing to Cover them but the Heavens and Wet Cool Weather.” 48 “Samuel Chase to Richard Henry Lee, May 17, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds. Letters of Delegates to Congress; “William Williams to Joseph Trumbull, August 7, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds. Letters of Delegates to Congress. “John Adams to Archibald Bulloch, July 1, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “John Adams to Samuel Cooper, June 9, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds.

102 Quebecois and Indian Loyalties

What is perhaps most interesting about that narrative is that it left little room for any level of introspection either in Schuyler’s mind or in those of the members of

Congress. Their campaign’s mounting failures were, in their minds at least, rooted not in their inability to effectively gain Quebecois and Indian loyalties, but in the difficulties of conducting a campaign over extended and treacherous terrain without the resources available to a global empire like the one they faced. While those difficulties most certainly played a role, quite a large one in fact, they were no less influential in directing the flow of the campaign than was the fading support of the Quebecois and Indians. This was particularly true of the latter half of the campaign, as the rebel occupation of the province began to fall apart in the spring of 1776.

Early on, however, Schuyler and his Congressional superiors could do little but honor the desire of indigenous representatives to maintain their factions’ neutrality in the conflict.49 While individual Indians chose to serve as guides and diplomatic envoys for

Continental forces during those months, the large majority of northern indigenous leaders refused to officially ally themselves or their followers with either side.50 Such refusals were motivated by a variety of factors. For some, like the constituent groups of the

Iroquois Confederacy, their involvement in the decades of imperial warfare that preceded the outbreak of the rebellion had left their communities devastated physically and

49 See “John Adams to James Warren, June 7, 1775,” vol. 1, Smith, et al., eds; “Narrative and Remarks by a Gentleman who left Montreal, July 6, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1594; and “General Washington to Continental Congress, August 4, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:26; and Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 4. 50 See “Journal of the Proceedings of the four Indians sent by the Commissioners of Indian Affairs,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:1275; “Benedict Arnold to the Continental Congress, June 13, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:976; “Answer to a Speech sent by the Stockbridge Indians to the Caughnawagas, or Canadian Tribes of Indians, near Montreal, June 15, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1002; “Report of the Deputies of the Six Nations of their mission to the Caughnawagas, September 24, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:798; “James Deane to Philip Schuyler, March 18, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 5:769.

103 emotionally, weakening their geopolitical influence severely and threatening the very ties that bound them together.51 For others, like the Kahnawakes near Montreal, their territorial location at the center of events was complicated further by competing relationships with both camps that included an uneasy history of growing tension with

British authorities and a standing agreement to have their children educated at rebel sympathizer Eleazor Wheelock’s Indian school in New Hampshire (now Dartmouth

College).52

Still, for many, the outbreak of hostilities represented above all an opportunity to return to the diplomatic status quo established prior to the British victory in the Seven

Years’ War.53 In the years of the French and Indian Wars, many eastern North American indigenous groups had adroitly played the interests of French and British imperial powers off of one another to their own advantage, avoiding conflict whenever possible and only engaging when victory seemed assured and the potential benefits could be maximized.

This allowed at least some of these groups to maintain their sovereignty in the face of imperial interference and colonial expansion. With the exit of French forces from the continent after the Seven Years’ War, the large majority of indigenous communities east of the Mississippi River were faced with the task of conducting diplomacy with a single, frequently recalcitrant, imperial power. Finding themselves caught once more between two European armies struggling for nominal control of North American territories during

51 See Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1972); and Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). 52 Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35 and 68-70. 53 See Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

104 the American War for Independence, the leaders of those communities worked to build a new balance of power upon a foundation of their own neutrality.

Such efforts became increasingly complicated as the campaign in Quebec progressed and it became apparent that the rebel colonies lacked the resources necessary to conduct negotiations with indigenous communities on Native terms. Diplomatic relations between Europeans and Indians in North America had long been undergirded by the mutual exchange of gifts.54 For Native leaders, this practice ensured that diplomacy with colonists would be conducted at least partially on their own cultural terms and granted them access to European manufactured goods. For colonial leaders it was often a source of resentment, an often-costly necessity that provoked suspicions of Indian duplicity and greed. Still, facing as they were an opponent that was not only willing but more than able to sustain indigenous alliances with gift-giving rebel leaders had little choice in the matter, especially early on in the war when the direction of those alliances was still in question. So, they did everything they could to supply potential Indian allies with the gifts they desired.

Unfortunately for the rebels, those gifts were – like most goods – in very short supply. It was a cause of frequent concern for Philip Schuyler not only during the campaign but long after it as well. The “Indian goods that were sent up are all expended,” he wrote to Congress in February of 1776, “none are to be had here, and I am daily tormented by parties of Indians from all quarters.”55 Without those goods, rebel relations with the indigenous communities of the Northern Department stagnated. That state of

54 For more information on gift-giving practices in European-Indian diplomacy, see David Murray, Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Indian-White Exchanges (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000). 55 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, February 10, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:990.

105 affairs changed very little in the campaign’s aftermath. “I soon expect a visit from a considerable number of chiefs and warriours,” Schuyler wrote six months after the

Quebec Campaign had ended, “they are in great distress for blankets” but “unfortunately we have none here.”56 By 1777, the situation was at a crisis point. “I have Indians, more or less, every day with me, complaining of the want of cloathing, blankets especially, of which we have not one,” Schuyler wrote to Congress on January 25, and “I clearly perceive that our cause will be most essentially prejudiced, unless a large stock of Indian goods be immediately sent here.”57 “To transact business with Indians at any time is a most disagreeable task,” he reminded his superiors, but “to do it with empty hands greatly encreases the difficulty.”58 By July Schuyler had begun receiving reports that Indians were refusing to accept Continental currency, a sure sign that indigenous estimations of rebel trustworthiness were at their lowest possible ebb.59 Without the necessary tools at his disposal for conducting diplomacy with Native leaders on their own terms, Schuyler held little hope that he would be able to secure alliances with the groups those leaders represented.

Of course, the downturn in rebel fortunes during the Quebec Campaign in 1775 didn’t help much either. This was particularly the case after the Continental Army’s attempt to capture the city of Quebec on December 31 ended in disaster with the death of

General Montgomery. Prior to that point, rebel forces in the province had been on

56 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, December 30, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 3:1496. 57 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, January 25, 1777,” PCC, Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 2:97. 58 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, January 25, 1777,” PCC, Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 2:97. 59“Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Philip Schuyler, July 3, 1777,” in Peter Gansevoort. Hero of Fort Schuyler: Selected Revolutionary War Correspondence of Brigadier General Peter Gansevoort, Jr., ed. David A. Ranzan and Matthew J. Hollis (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014), 66.

106 occasion joined by locals Indians, particularly the Kahnawakes, who served primarily as messengers, scouts, and emissaries in deference to their stated desire to remain as neutral as possible, Afterwards, however, rebel leaders (Schuyler chief among them) were sure that that support would melt away before their eyes.

Convinced as he was that many indigenous leaders would anticipate British victory and oppose the invasion in the wake of Montgomery’s failure to take the city,

General Schuyler moved quickly to reemphasize the strength of his cause. Shortly after he learned of the battle, he ordered the arrest of the British Loyalist John Johnson (son of the famous Sir William), sending a combined force of 3,000 Continental troops and local militiamen through Haudenosaunee lands to Johnstown, New York on January 20,

1776.60 Although the force was eventually able to successfully capture Johnson and 300 of his supporters, however, Schuyler’s interference in the borderlands caused considerable unease in nearby indigenous communities.61 Many in those communities, particularly Mohawks with close ties to the Johnson family, interpreted Schuyler’s actions as a sign of disrespect, and feared it portended an ominous disregard for their

60 In a letter to Schuyler on January 16, 1776, General George Washington wrote that he was “much concerned for General Montgomery and Colonel Arnold; and the consequences which will result from their miscarriage, should it happen,” indicating that he and other rebel leaders had not yet been informed of the defeat at Quebec. By January 20, however, the President of Congress John Hancock had issued a plea for more troops to the colonies based on news that the storm of Quebec had failed. Meanwhile, in letters on January 23 and 24 to Hancock and from Schuyler and Washington respectively, the consequences of the Continental Army’s failure to win the city are discussed extensively. This would seem to suggest that Schuyler received news of the defeat at Quebec sometime between January 16 and January 20 before passing it on to his superiors. His decision to order the arrest of Johnson in the period during which he learned of Montgomery’s failure to capture the city would thus seem to have been at least partially designed as a response to the state of affairs in Canada. See “George Washington to Philip Schuyler, January 16, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:696; “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, January 23, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:818; and “George Washington to the President of Congress, January 24, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:840; as well as “John Hancock to the New Jersey Committee of Safety, January 20, 1776.” vol. 3, Smith, et al., eds. 61 See “Commissioners Meet with Lower Mohawk Castle Sachems, May 20, 1776,” in Penrose, ed., 56-59; “Conference with Mohawks at Caughnawaga, November 10, 1776,” in Penrose, ed., 61-62; and “Conference with the Six Nations at German Flats, August 8-13, 1776.” in Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 43-56.

107 territorial sovereignty. Indeed, they had every reason to give those fears credence given the colony of New York’s decades-long efforts to expand onto their lands by any means possible. Such fears were only compounded by the decision of Congressional leaders to call for the recruitment of Indian auxiliary forces as a means of shoring up their flagging campaign in the north, a clear violation of indigenous declarations of neutrality.62

Convinced by such actions that the British offered better opportunities to protect their communities’ autonomy, a growing number of young Indian men eager to prove themselves in battle chose to disregard their leaders’ calls for continued neutrality and actively fought against rebel forces in the north.63 Ultimately, then, Schuyler’s efforts to obviate the renewed possibility of a British-Indian alliance in the aftermath of the Battle of Quebec became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Later, during the Continental Army’s retreat in the spring of 1776, British soldiers combined with the Abenaki Indians of Odanak to attack and seize the rebel-occupied outpost at Les Cèdres (The Cedars), one of the army’s last strongholds in the province and key to protecting its rear during its return to the lower thirteen colonies. In the battle that ensued, a rebel unit under Lieutenant Isaac Butterfield tasked with holding Les

Cèdres as an avenue for the anticipated retreat of the Continental Army from Canada surrendered to a force under Captain George Forster that included as many as 500 Indian combatants (many of them Mohawks, recently alienated by Schuyler’s invasion of their lands on the New York frontier). They were joined in their surrender the next day by reinforcements sent from General Benedict Arnold at Montreal under Colonel Timothy

62 Ford et al., eds., 4:412. 63 See, for example, Stephanie Cohen and Carol Heyer, : Iroquois Leader in the Revolution (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).

108 Bedel. Infuriated by the turn of events, Arnold personally led a detachment of 450 men to confront the British contingent under Forster, which had after its victory at Les Cèdres moved to occupy Fort Anne on the nearby. Heeding rumors that the

Continental unit numbered as many as 2,000 men, Forster chose to retreat across the river to Quinze-Chênes, where he was penned in by Arnold’s forces shortly thereafter. Faced with Forster’s threats to leave the Continental prisoners at the mercy of his Indian allies, the council of war called by Arnold to determine the best course of action chose to avoid any open confrontation that might endanger the lives of their fellow soldiers. Meanwhile, the efforts of Kahnawake emissaries working to convince Forster’s indigenous auxiliaries to return home began to bear fruit. The day after Arnold’s council of war, most of the

Indians present had withdrawn from the standoff. Newly weakened, Forster agreed to release the Continental soldiers he held captive on the promise of a prisoner exchange.

To many rebel leaders, the Battle of The Cedars seemed to threaten the opening of a new front along the colonial borderlands as other indigenous communities followed in the footsteps of those present at Les Cèdres. In an effort to push British officials to foreswear any further encouragement of indigenous participation in the conflict, General

Arnold forced Captain Forster to condemn his own use of Indian allies in the strictest terms in the official articles of capitulation. The “customs and manners of the savages in war,” the articles began, were “opposite and contrary to the humane disposition of the

British Government, and to all civilized nations.”64 “To avoid the inevitable consequences of the savage customs in former wars,” they went on, Captain Forster has,

“in compliance” with the “dictates of humanity,” agreed to an “exchange of prisoners

64 “Articles of Capitulation between General Arnold and Captain Forster, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 1:163.

109 faithfully made.”65 By relying upon the support of Indians, the capitulations declared,

Captain Forster had deliberately violated the accepted customs of ‘civilized’ society. By forcing Forster to officially acknowledge this apparent violation, Arnold effectively lent formal credence to rebel fears that British officials were actively working to incite Indian attacks against the colonies. Given this credence, such fears quickly blossomed into full- blown outrage (an outrage that conveniently overlooked Congressional leaders’ own efforts to recruit Indian auxiliaries in the preceding months).

This outrage was fed by growing rumors that the Indians at Les Cèdres had committed atrocities against the Continental prisoners in the aftermath of the battle. Such rumors persisted despite Forster’s insistence in the articles of capitulation that the Indians that had accompanied him had only issued “threats and menaces” to mistreat the prisoners.66 The Congressional committee composed of Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, on the other hand, insisted in a postscript to an official report on northern affairs dated May

27 that at least “five or six of our prisoners were murdered by the Indians, in the most cruel manner, after the surrender.”67 “The whole were [then] stripped,” the delegation informed their peers, and “contrary to the terms of capitulation” forced to march “during a very stormy and tempestuous night.”68 These assertions would ultimately find their way into the official Congressional report on July 10 (in spite of the fact that the delegation’s members had not been present for the battle itself). There, they would be expressed in language that deliberately evoked lurid tales of Indian actions in the preceding decades of

65 “Articles of Capitulation between General Arnold and Captain Forster, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 1:163. 66 “Articles of Capitulation between General Arnold and Captain Forster, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 1:163. 67 “Commissioners in Canada to the President of Congress, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:589. 68 “Commissioners in Canada to the President of Congress, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:589.

110 imperial warfare with France. The prisoners were “immediately put into the custody of the savages,” the report read, where they were “stripped of their baggage and wearing apparel.”69 Then, it recounted, “one was first shot, and, while retaining life and sensation, was roasted.”70 “Several others,” it added, were “worn down by famine and cruelty” and

“were left exposed in an island naked,” where they “perish[ed] with cold and hunger.”71

In general, the report concluded, the prisoners “were continually insulted, buffeted, and ill treated by the savages.”72

In the minds of Congressional leaders, there could be only one response to such behavior. That response came the very same day in a series of resolves regarding the exchange of prisoners promised by General Arnold in the articles of capitulation signed by Captain Forster. “Previous to the delivery of the prisoners to be returned on our part,” the resolves declared, the “British commander in Canada [is] required to deliver into our hands the authors, abettors, and perpetrators of the horrid murder committed on the prisoners.”73 “The murder of the prisoners of war was a gross and inhuman violation of the laws of nature and nations,” they asserted, and “condign punishment should be inflicted.”74 Furthermore, Congressional leaders promised, “if the enemy shall commit any further violences, by putting to death, torturing, or otherwise ill treating the prisoners retained by them” then “punishments of the same kinds and degree [will] be inflicted on an equal number of the captives from them in our possession.”75 Moreover, any such acts committed “contrary to good faith, the laws of nature, or the customs of civilized nations”

69 Ford et al., eds., 5:535. 70 Ford et al., eds., 5:536. 71 Ford et al., eds., 5:536. 72 Ford et al., eds., 5:537. 73 Ford et al., eds., 5:539. 74 Ford et al., eds., 5:538. 75 Ford et al., eds., 5:539.

111 by “officers or soldiers of his Britannic Majesty, or by foreigners or savages taken into his service” were, according to the members of the Continental Congress, to be

“considered as done by his orders.”76 The Battle of The Cedars, then, had, in

Congressional minds at least, opened a new era in the conduct of the war. Captain

Forster’s use of Indian allies had, rebel leaders argued, clearly violated the established customs of ‘proper’ military conduct. The only proper response was retaliation in kind.

The blame for any bloodshed that might ensue would be laid at the feet of King George

III himself.

And laid it was. In the same weeks that a Congressional committee was deliberating over its response to the events at The Cedars, another committee was deliberating over their draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence from

Great Britain. In the final draft of that document, Congressional leaders famously protested that King George III and his ministers had “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.”77 The vehemence of this language is perhaps a reflection in part of its author’s thoughts regarding the rumors of Indian violence in Quebec. A fortnight after the Declaration of Independence was approved by his peers in the Continental Congress, Jefferson was still recounting the events of the battle to his correspondents with considerable outrage. “Capt. Forster, commander of the king’s troops,” he wrote derisively in a letter to his fellow Virginian

Francis Eppes, “informed Arnold that if he should attack, the Indians would put every

76 Ford et al., eds., 5:538. 77 Thomas Jefferson, “Declaration of Independence,” Archives.gov, accessed March 19, 2013, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html.

112 man of the prisoners to death.”78 “It was an excruciating situation,” he continued incredulously, and the “enemy were in earnest about killing the prisoners.”79 In short, he concluded, the “enemy behaved dastardly.”80 “You may rely” on the “above account of

Arnold’s affair,” he ended his letter, “as I was one of a committee appointed to inquire into the whole of that matter.”81 Jefferson’s time on that committee, it seemed, had had quite the impact.

Revealingly, rebel leaders responded with significantly more outrage to the Battle of The Cedars than they did to acts of Quebecois resistance to the rebel invasion, an indication that the racial prejudices they and their progenitors had formed over the course of the previous century may have taken precedence over their cultural ones. The perceived transgressions of fellow European descendants like the Quebecois could, it appeared, be forgiven. If the rebel leaders’ reaction to the Battle of The Cedars is any indication, on the other hand, those of the Indians could apparently not. Yet, for much of the period after the Battle of Quebec on December 31, the rebel forces besieging the provincial capital under Benedict Arnold were on multiple occasions harried by

Quebecois militiamen who at one time had chosen to support the Continental Army but subsequently lashed out at that army after their complaints about rebel abuses were ignored.

Perhaps most notably, the outcome of the final engagement of the campaign, the

Battle of Trois-Rivières (Three Rivers), hinged primarily on the actions of Quebecois participants. After their headlong retreat from the siege of Quebec, the rebel forces in the

78 “Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, July 15, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith, et al., eds. 79 “Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, July 15, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith, et al., eds. 80 “Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, July 15, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith, et al., eds. 81 “Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, July 15, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith, et al., eds.

113 northern province began congregating under General John Thomas at Sorel at the confluence of the Richelieu and St. Lawrence Rivers farther south. Shortly thereafter, they in turn abandoned their outpost at Sorel for the more defensible position at Chambly, where Thomas died of smallpox on May 21. When his replacement, General William

Thompson, held a council of war there seven days later to determine the best course of action, the members of the Congressional Committee to Canada was present. They had, they complained in a letter to Philip Schuyler on May 17, been forced during their time in the province to act in the capacity of “Generals, Commissaries, [and] Justices of the

Peace,” roles they filled once more at Thompson’s council by ordering him to send a force to occupy the village of Deschambault a day’s march south of the capital.82 From there, they hoped to advance on the city of Quebec once more with the help of fresh troops soon to arrive from the south under General John Sullivan. Before they could do so, however, the rebels had first to push past the British forces camped at Trois-Rivières under General Simon Fraser, a task the Congressional committee left to General

Thompson to plan.

Thompson himself expressed doubts regarding the plan, particularly the likelihood of any rebel force receiving assistance from the Quebecois. “I am told that the Canadians below Deschambault are now taking arms against us,” he informed the committee in a letter on May 25, and “we must expect it will be the case above Richelieu” as well.83 Nonetheless, he pressed forward, crossing the St. Lawrence

82 “Commissioners in Canada to Philip Schuyler, May 17, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:587; “Proceedings of a Council of War held in Chambly, Canada, May 30, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 1:164; “Philip Schuyler to George Washington, May 31, 1776,” in Crackel et al., eds. 83 “William Thompson to the Commissioners in Canada, May 25, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:594. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Vose also recorded reports that the inhabitants of Montreal were intending to attack the rebel troops stationed there and was urged by the Congressional committee members to advance there as quickly as possible as reinforcements. Joseph Vose, Journal of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Vose,

114 River at the village of Nicolet on the night of June 7 a few miles from Trois-Rivières.

Shortly after doing so, he found his suspicions regarding the Quebecois proved correct. A

Quebecois militia captain observed who Thompson’s crossing raced to warn Fraser and his men of the rebels’ imminent arrival, robbing them of the element of surprise and giving Burgoyne and Carleton time to arrive with reinforcements. Then a local Quebecois farmer that Thompson pressed into service as a guide for his troops on their advance to

Trois-Rivières, Antoine Gautier, led the rebels into the midst of a swamp, a morass from which they were unable to extricate themselves until morning. Once they had they found themselves not on the outskirts of town but several miles removed from it, at which point they were assaulted by grapeshot from the HMS Martin in the river nearby. Retreating once more into the swamp they began to move forward towards the town, its location now discernible in the light of day. When they exited the swamp once more, Fraser’s men greeted them with musket fire and they promptly broke. To cap the affair, when

Thompson and several of his officers attempted to stem the tide of the retreat a unit of

Quebecois militiamen ambushed them from the bushes on all sides and forced them to follow their men in fleeing the battlefield. Those rebels who fell behind were picked off one by one by the Quebecois militia. Fearing that he would be “murdered in the woods by the Canadians,” Thompson ultimately chose to surrender to the British.84 Two hundred and thirty-five of his soldiers joined him, fueled by the same fears.

April-July, 1776, ed. Henry Winchester Cunningham (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson and Son, 1905), 12 SOC (973.3313 V964). 84 William Irvine. “General Irvine’s Journal of the Canadian Campaign, 1776,” in The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America (New York: C. Benjamin Richardson & Co., 1862), 117.

115 Interestingly, though they had played such a pivotal role in the British victory at

Trois-Rivières, the Quebecois involvement in the battle seems to have largely escaped

Congressional notice. Indeed, the battle itself received little attention at all in

Congressional correspondence. This was, in part, a reflection of the progress of concurrent events, most notably the British retreat from Boston and subsequent passage of the Declaration of Independence. When they did discuss the Battle of Trois-Rivières

Congressional leaders attributed their troops’ defeat to the arrival of Burgoyne and

Carleton’s reinforcements rather than the extensive involvement of the Quebecois militia, a reflection perhaps of their unwillingness to acknowledge the dwindling possibility of the northern province’s entrance to the rebel union.85 What they were willing to discuss, however, was the question of what those reinforcements might do now that the British had regained control of the northern province.

The Saratoga Campaign

The potential of an invasion from Quebec by British forces was the expression of every fear rebel leaders had entertained since the retreat of the Continental Army in 1776.

John Adams, as on all matters, was particularly vocal about the danger of attacks on the borderlands after that retreat. “Canada is our Enemy” and “we are now compleatly between two Fires,” he wrote in a message to Joseph Reed, President of the Executive

Committee of Pennsylvania, “I expect a horrid Carnage upon our Frontiers, and a great

Deal of Desolation.” Adams was far from alone in expressing such fears. “The Enemy will take the advantage of [our] consternation,” Maryland representative Thomas Stone

85 “Maryland Delegates to Matthew Tilghman, June 25, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “New Hampshire Delegates to Meschach Ware, June 26, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “New York Delegates to the New York Provincial Congress, June 27, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “Francis Lightfoot Lee to Richard Henry Lee, June 30, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds.

116 echoed in a letter to fellow Marylander James Hollyday in May, and soon they will

“assemble the Canadians” to visit a “most bloody & distructive war upon the Frontiers.”

In short, Francis Lightfoot Lee concluded in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, “evil is coming.”86

The sense of such letters was, then, that the Continental loss in Quebec represented the revivification of northern threats to the lower thirteen colonies.

Ultimately, this message would find its full force in John Hancock’s messages to rebel leaders across the colonies in his capacity as the president of the Continental Congress.

“Should the Canadians & Indians take up Arms agt. us (which there is too much Reason to fear) we shall then have the whole Force of that Country to contend with,” he warned in a message on June 4, and “perhaps at this Moment they are landing on some Part of our Country.” The supporters of the rebellion “are called upon to say, whether they will live Slaves, or die Freemen,” he declared, and “requested to step forth in Defence of their

Wives, their Children, their Liberty, and every Thing they hold dear.” “The Cause is certainly a most glorious one,” he informed his readers, and “I trust every Man in the

Colon[ies] is determined to see it gloriously ended, or to perish in the Ruins of it.” “The

Situation of our Country at this Season, calls therefore for all the Vigour & Wisdom among us,” he continued in another such message, and “if we do not mean to desert her at this alarming Crisis, it is high Time . . . to exert ourselves in a Manner becoming

Freemen.” “As Freemen” he informed the members of his new nation, “you [must] not hesitate a Moment, about the Choice.” In short, he asserted, the “Fate of America will be

86 “John Adams to James Warren, June 16, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “John Adams to Joseph Reed, July 7, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “Thomas Stone to James Hollyday?, May 20, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; Francis Lightfoot Lee to Richard Henry Lee, June 30, 1776, vol. 4, Smith et al., eds.

117 determined the ensuing Campaign.” “Should the united Colonies be able to keep their

Ground in this Campaign,” he concluded, “I am under no Apprehensions on Acct. of any future one.”87

According to Congressional leaders, then, if the rebels rose up in defense of the lower thirteen colonies, they just might be able to neutralize the Quebecois threat once and for all. The rebels did not have to wait long for this opportunity. By June of 1777, a force of 8000 Quebecois, Indian, Hessian, and British soldiers had begun marching from

Quebec under General John Burgoyne intent upon severing New England’s connection with the rest of the new nation. Over the course of a hard-fought campaign in the summer of 1777, a force of 700 Continental regulars and 1400 militiamen under Philip Schuyler did their utmost to slow the progress of Burgoyne’s troops as much as possible by felling trees, destroying bridges, and damming streams along his route through the New

Hampshire Grants. Such efforts effectively severed Burgoyne’s connection to the cumbersome wagons and draft animals tasked with carrying his army’s provisions. By the time his forces reached the area around Saratoga, New York in September, and were confronted with a force of 8500 rebels under General Horatio Gates, Burgoyne’s soldiers were exhausted, starving, and ill equipped. In a series of running battles and skirmishes over the course of two and a half weeks (the two most prominent being the ones on

September 19 and October 7), Burgoyne and his troops were compelled to retreat and ultimately surrender in the face of a larger and better supplied force of Continental soldiers.

87 “John Hancock to Certain Colonies, June 4, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith, et al., eds; “John Hancock to Certain Colonies, June 25, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds; “John Hancock to Certain States, July 16, 1776,” vol. 4, Smith et al., eds.

118 The rebel victory at Saratoga was a major turning point in the war. Not only did it secure an offer of alliance from the French monarchy, it effectively ended the perceived threat from Quebec in the minds of most rebel leaders. The much-feared invasion from the north had come to pass, and it had failed. What’s more, the Quebecois militiamen that had served under Burgoyne during that invasion had, by all accounts, been coerced into service. So, not only did rebel leaders no longer need to fear the possibility of their rebellion being cut in half from Quebec, they no longer needed to worry about gaining the sympathies of the Quebecois. They could, they believed, simply allow the British to continue using coercion to enforce Quebecois obedience and thus alienate their French- speaking subjects to the point that they might join their fellow colonies in rebellion.

The Court Martial of Philip Schuyler

While the Saratoga Campaign’s conclusion offered a resolution of sorts for many rebel leaders concerned with the war’s progress in the north, Philip Schuyler’s difficulties continued unabated. Indeed, the general’s performance during the Saratoga Campaign had convinced many rebel leaders that he was, in fact, no general at all. Much of this perception revolved around the fall of Fort Ticonderoga to Burgoyne’s troops on July 6 after what amounted to an, at best, perfunctory defense by rebel forces commanded by

Schuyler’s subordinate General Arthur St. Clair. Burgoyne’s capture of the fort, which had so ominously threatened the British colonial borderlands under French command during the Seven Years’ War, sent shockwaves through the halls of the Continental

Congress. The delegates from New England were particularly outraged, having long opposed Schuyler’s appointment to command of the Northern Department in favor of their own candidate Horatio Gates. Gates, who had been agitating for much of the war for

119 a command independent from that of George Washington’s, found willing supporters among New England delegates resentful of the influence New York had over the

Northern Department with Schuyler at its helm. Seizing upon Schuyler’s absence from

Ticonderoga when it fell as evidence of dereliction of duty, the New England party in

Congress began to push insistently for the New Yorker’s ouster.

Many of those who did so chose to characterize the fort’s capture as a product primarily of Schuyler’s perceived ineptitude. In Congressional debates on July 26, for example, Connecticut representative Eliphalet Dyer argued that Schuyler might have been “endowed of many val[uable] qual[itie]s” but was not “disting[uishe]d for milit[ar]y abilities.” “He has not talents for govern[in]g an army,” Dyer declared, and “it is no supposit[ion] of a crime to remove one who is unfortunate, or unqualified.”88

Massachusetts delegate Samuel Adams echoed these sentiments in a private letter to

Boston minister Samuel Cooper the same month. “I confess it is not more than I expected when Genl Schu[yle]r” was “intrusted with the Command,” he wrote, and “there is something droll enough in a Generals not knowing where to find the main Body of his

Army.”89 “Gates is the Man I should have chosen,” he confided to Cooper, for “he is honest and true, & has the Art of gaining the Love of his Soldiers, principally because he is always present and shares with them in Fatigue & Danger.”90 As it turned out, Dyer and Adams were not alone in this opinion. Indeed, it seems to have been shared by the large majority of Congressional leaders. On August 4, 1777, Congress relieved Schuyler

88 Charles Thomson’s Notes of Debates, July 26, 1777, vol. 7, Smith et al., eds. 89 Samuel Adams to Samuel Cooper, July 15, 1777, vol. 7, Smith et al., eds. 90 Samuel Adams to Samuel Cooper, July 15, 1777, vol. 7, Smith et al., eds.

120 of duty and replaced him with Gates by a vote of eleven states to one.91 The sole dissenting voice in his favor was his home state of New York.

Some Congressional leaders, however, wished to go much further, demanding that an inquiry be organized and that those parties found responsible for the fort’s loss be held accountable. In a letter to his wife Abigail on August 19, John Adams voiced his thoughts on the matter with his trademark acerbity. “We shall never defend a Post, until

We shoot a General,” he wrote, and “no other Fort will ever be evacuated without an

Enquiry, nor any Officer come off without a Court Martial.”92 “We have suffered too many Disgraces to pass unexpiated,” he declared, and now “every Disgrace must be wiped off.”93 Congressional leaders like Adams had simply witnessed too many of their rebellion’s setbacks to allow the course of events to continue unaltered. While most may not have embraced the future vice president’s possibly facetious suggestions of execution, they most likely would have agreed with his sentiments regarding the necessity of court martials wholeheartedly.

What is certain is that Adams found support for his notions of justice in one quarter at least: in his letters to , the new President of the Continental

Congress, Schuyler himself demanded that an inquiry into his conduct be carried out in increasingly insistent terms. “I hope “that the enquiry into my conduct may take place as early as possible,” he wrote to Laurens in November of 1777, for I do not wish to

“remain in my present disagreeable situation any longer than absolute necessity

91 Ford et al., eds., 8:604. 92 John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 19, 1777, vol. 7, Smith et al., eds. 93 John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 19, 1777, vol. 7, Smith et al., eds.

121 requires.”94 When, by the next month, the inquiry had still not taken place, Schuyler’s patience began to fray. “WHEN a man of sentiment, labouring under odious and injurious suspicions, has in prospect a period which promises to afford him relief, and restore quiet to his mind,” he explained, “it is natural that he should anxiously wish for its arrival.”95

“The conviction of a good and a clear conscience leaves not a doubt in my mind,” he asserted, “that the result of the enquiry into my conduct will have that effect, and restore me to the full confidence of such of my honest countrymen as have been led away by popular clamour.”96 “Congress will therefore pardon me,” he concluded, “if I am importunate on this subject.”97 Unfortunately for Schuyler, the wheels of military justice turned slowly in the new United States. Despite his insistence, it took the Continental

Army ten more months to hold the hearing for his court martial. But, beginning on

September 29, 1778, it did. Schuyler’s moment had arrived.

The general greeted it with a mountain of paperwork. For three days, Schuyler presented reams of evidence documenting his close attention to the details of running the

Northern Department in the leadup to Burgoyne’s invasion of New York. While the prosecutor, or Advocate General, John Laurens sought to restrict the case to the period immediately preceding Ticonderoga’s capture, Schuyler quickly and efficiently hijacked the proceedings for use as a referendum on his military performance since the failed

94 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, November 28, 1777,” in Philip Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, Held at Major General Lincoln's Quarters, near Quaker-Hill, in the State of New- York, by Order of His Excellency General Washington, Commander in Chief of the Army of the United States of America, for the Trial of Major General Schuyler, October 1, 1778, Major General Lincoln, President (Philadelphia: Hall and Sellers, 1778), 10. 95 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, December 29, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 10. 96 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, December 29, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 10. 97 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, December 29, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 10.

122 invasion of Quebec. Not only did he read letters into the record documenting his efforts to organize and supply the posts under his command prior to June 1777, he also provided copies of letters demonstrating that he continued to offer assistance to the Northern

Department well after his removal from office. For three days Schuyler hammered away at the notion that he had been inattentive to his duties as commander of Continental forces in the north, seeking to remove any doubt of his innocence in the mind of the court.

It may not have been particularly difficult for him to do so given his audience and chosen defense. The panel of judges who sat to hear his case was composed of five generals and eight colonels, Continental Army men who were certainly predisposed to feel sympathetic to a defendant who claimed, as Schuyler did, that his efforts as a military commander had not received adequate civilian support. Indeed, such men had suffered from this absence of support (perceived or otherwise) since the beginning of the war, with Continental troops lacking basic necessities like uniforms, food, and ammunition in nearly every campaign from the 1775 invasion of Quebec onwards. What they no doubt concluded from Schuyler’s defense was that Ticonderoga had fallen to the very same civilian disregard they believed had plagued the war effort from the very beginning. But, if they entertained any uncertainties, Schuyler was there to bolster their confidence in the matter.

Schuyler began his defense on October 1 by outlining his efforts to supply the troops throughout the Northern Department from the winter of 1776 onwards. One of the

Northern Department’s most pressing needs was cannons for Ticonderoga.98 When

98 Cannons were a common request throughout the Northern Department over the course of the war. See, for example, Philip Schuyler’s request for cannons for the boats on the northern lakes in “Philip Schuyler to

123 Benedict Arnold and the Green Mountain Boys captured the fort in 1775 the defenses had been equipped with an impressive array of cannons, a collection of 4- to 24-pounders, howitzers, and mortars that weighed a total of nearly sixty tons. In one of the most well- known episodes of the early war, Colonel Henry Knox employed a series of ships and sleds to drag the guns three hundred miles over rivers and mountains from Ticonderoga to the rebel forces contemporaneously besieging British troops under General William

Howe in Boston. Their deployment at the siege ultimately drove Howe to abandon the city, giving the Continental Army one of its first major victories of the war and propelling

Knox into the position of Washington’s Chief of Artillery. It also, however, left

Ticonderoga itself largely defenseless, a circumstance that was of less significance to the rebel war effort in the spring of 1776 while Continental troops continued to occupy much of Quebec but was of considerably more concern after those troops’ retreat from the northern province just a short time later. With rebel forces ousted from Quebec

Ticonderoga and the outposts to its south were the only line of defense protecting the

Northern Department from a British invasion, and without cannon that line seemed exceedingly thin. So, Schuyler aimed to thicken it.

Unfortunately for him, the cannons he sought remained in short supply and the

Northern Department seemed a low priority to those with the wherewithal to meet its need for artillery. In a series of increasingly frustrated communications with various officials both political and military, Schuyler endeavored to impress upon his

Peter Gansevoort, Jr., June 3, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 1:55; and the ongoing struggle of Peter Gansevoort to obtain cannons for Fort Schuyler from Horatio Gates in “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Henry Laurens, January 26, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to William Duer and , January 26, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:85; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Horatio Gates, early April 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; and “George Clinton to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., May 17, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p.

124 correspondents the desperate circumstances of the rebel outposts under his command.

Hoping to avoid diverting resources from the main body of the Continental Army under

George Washington, Schuyler sought first to obtain the cannons he required from civilian officials in the mid-Atlantic. Finding his requests unmet in that quarter Schuyler then turned reluctantly to New England, a region where he had few friends. “I have not been honoured with a line from Congress, on the subject of the preparations necessary for the next campaign in the Northern Quarter,” he wrote to Governor Jonathan Trumbull of

Connecticut on December 29, 1776, and must “conclude that the enemy’s manoeuvres in

Jersey have so entirely engrossed their attention, that they have not be able to attend to what I suggested.” “I have therefore resolved, without waiting any longer for their directions,” he continued, “to carry into execution whatever I deem essential to the service.” “Amongst other things,” he informed Trumbull, “that of procuring a sufficiency of cannon for the defence of Ticonderoga, &c. is a capital article.” “I should therefore be glad,” he concluded, “to know what cannon you can furnish.” It was a simple request, but one that was unlikely to have any success given Schuyler’s unpopularity in Trumbull’s state and the surrounding area. Still, the general persevered. 99

In a letter written the following day to Speaker of the Massachusetts House

Thomas Cushing, Schuyler echoed his request to Trumbull in a plea for help from

Cushing’s own state. He also expressed his low expectations that his message to

Connecticut would produce the desired result. “I am not yet advised what Connecticut can afford me,” he confided to Cushing, “but I am confident it will be greatly short of our wants.” “There are none in [New York], nor can I procure any from Pennsylvania or

99 “Philip Schuyler to Jonathan Trumbull, December 29, 1776,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 17.

125 Jersey,” he complained, and “I find that I am to expect no cannon from your State” as well. I “wish the Legislature of your State would reconsider the matter,” he begged, and

“supply me with all the cannon you possibly can.” Like his earlier appeals for assistance from the mid-Atlantic and Connecticut, however, Schuyler’s entreaties to Massachusetts would ultimately be ineffective. So, he turned to his final resort: the army itself. 100

Just as the Northern Department had long suffered from a lack of supplies, the main body of the Continental Army under Washington was perennially low on food, ammunition, and clothing for its troops. It was a fact of which Schuyler was well aware, but one that he chose to ignore under the circumstances. In March 1777, the general sent his chief of artillery Major Ebenezer Stevens to Henry Knox himself in search of cannons for Ticonderoga.101 Pressed as he was by the artillery needs of Washington’s forces as they sought to prevent William Howe from pushing south from New York to

Philadelphia in the spring and summer of that year, Knox proved unwilling to relinquish any of his guns. Schuyler’s final means of obtaining cannons for Ticonderoga had been exhausted. His men would have to rely on other methods to make his department defensible.

Schuyler detailed these methods during his court martial proceedings on October

2, 1778, the second day of his defense. As it became clear that the British were organizing an invasion of the Northern Department from Quebec, Schuyler issued orders outlining his plans to defend the north without relying too heavily on the ill-supplied and

100 “Philip Schuyler to Thomas Cushing, December 30, 1776,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 17. 101 “Philip Schuyler to Ebenezer Stevens, March 10, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 26.

126 undermanned rebel outposts of the region.102 Trees were to be felled across every road and every bridge was to be burnt.103 Supplies of food and ammunition were to be likewise destroyed if they could not be gathered and transported south to prevent them falling into enemy hands. As for Ticonderoga, it was only to be held as long as it was “consistent with the safety of the troops and stores.”104 Every effort was to be made to preserve the strength of the rebel army and slow the advance of the British invasion until a force could be gathered to more effectively oppose it. It was, as strategies went, a fairly traditional approach to defensive warfare, but it ultimately worked. When Burgoyne’s army reached

Ticonderoga, the rebel troops there evacuated the fort in the face of overwhelming odds.

They lived to fight another day while their comrades elsewhere focused their energies on depriving the British of sustenance and speed. By the time Burgoyne and his troops reached the area of Saratoga, they were exhausted and starving.

Of course, according to Schuyler, the rebel forces that met them there weren’t in much better shape. Few supplies had managed to reach the troops gathered in the

Northern Department, and those that had were often mishandled or damaged.105 In a letter

102 “Philip Schuyler to John Fellows, July 9, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 48; “Philip Schuyler to John Nixon, July 12, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 48. Schuyler had been struggling since the aftermath of the 1775 Quebec Campaign to make the outposts in his department more defensible. See, for example, “Philip Cortlandt to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., June 4, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 1:58; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Philip Schuyler, June 15, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:125. 103 For a description of how these orders were implemented at a specific outpost in the Northern Department, see “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Philip Schuyler, July 4, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:4. 104 “Council of War at Ticonderoga, June 20, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 9. 105 This was a common issue in the Northern Department throughout the period following the failed invasion of Quebec in 1775-1776 and had real implications for commanders’ ability to maintain discipline among the troops. See, for example, Jonathan Burton’s diary of his time at Mount Independence, a mile and a half away from Ticonderoga, where he references being unable to “Draw any Provition which Provoked the men Very much.” Burton, cited above, 30. See also “Christopher Yates to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., November 9, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:63.

127 to Deputy Commissary General Elisha Avery on June 28, Schuyler demanded answers.

“The Commissary General, in a letter of the 21st,” he told Avery, “expresses himself as follows: I have supplied the main army and the command Peek’s-Kill with one hundred and fifty head of fat cattle per week, for three weeks past from New-England.” “As no such supply has been sent on,” he continued, “you will please to inform me of the reasons.”106

Avery, a native of Connecticut appointed to the Northern Department at the behest of New England’s Congressional delegates in 1776, responded by claiming

Schuyler had not given him adequate support in carrying out his duties. The New Yorker responded with outrage. “You labour under a mistake,” he declared on June 29 in answer to Avery’s complaints, and “I insist upon your pointing out in what instance you have not been supported by me.” “That the army is so well supplied with flour you know is, in a great measure, owing to the hints I gave you,” he reminded him, and “that you procured barrels for that flour was in consequence of a plan I struck out for you.” A “sufficient stock of [other] provisions might have been laid on,” he asserted, “if the orders I gave” had “been complied with.” “Crouds of sleds [were] offered daily” for the transportation of supplies throughout the department, Schuyler recalled, but by your orders they

“returned from hence home without a loading” and “no provision was left in the stores.”

“It was faulty in you to [do] so,” he concluded, and “of that I have great reason to complain.” Once again, Schuyler was faced with the possibility that a lack of supplies

106 “Philip Schuyler to Elisha Avery, June 28, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 38. The commanders in the Northern Department complained frequently of the lack of supplies at their outposts. See, for example, “Christopher Yates to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., July 27, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 1:78; “Walter Livingston to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., August 7, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:2; “Christopher Yates to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., August 16, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:6; and “Jeremiah to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., July 21, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p.

128 might threaten the success of rebel arms in the north. Not unlike the Quebec Campaign of

1775, however, fortune favored the defenders, and yet another invading army in the north was forced to retreat. 107

Schuyler’s Retirement

Nearly a year later, on October 3, 1778, the judges at Schuyler’s trial found him not guilty of all charges. The following spring, Schuyler submitted his resignation from the Continental Army to Congress. It was refused, Congress declaring that it was “very desirous of retaining him in the service.”108 According to John Jay, the current President of the Continental Congress and delegate from New York, every state other than

Pennsylvania and those from New England was opposed to Schuyler’s exit from the military. “From New York South you have fast friends,” Jay wrote to Schuyler on March

21, 1779, and the “Commander in Chief wishes you to retain your Commission.”109 “The

Propriety of your Resignation is now out of question,” he assured his fellow New Yorker,

107 “Philip Schuyler to Elisha Avery, June 29, 1777,” in Schuyler, Proceedings of a General Court Martial, 39. Supplies went missing frequently in the Northern Department and were just as often misplaced or delayed. See, for example, “John Lansing to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., July 4, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 1:71; “Benjamin Egberts to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., September 12, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:29; “Jonathan Trumbull to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., November 8, 1776,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:61; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Horatio Gates, May 22, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:104; and “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Philip Schuyler, June 15, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 2:126. 108 Ford et al., eds., 13:332. Congress’ reluctance to accept Schuyler’s resignation may have been a result of their realization that the supply situation in the Northern Department had only worsened since Horatio Gates had assumed command, some of the commanders being forced to supply their troops out of their personal funds and many of the commanders complaints being seemingly ignored by their superior. See, for example, “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Horatio Gates, October 1, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Jacob Cuyler to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., November 28, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to n.r., December 12, 1777,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Horatio Gates, March 12, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “ to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., April 15, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to George Clinton, early April 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 3:n.p; “Peter Gansevoort, Jr. to Jacob Cuyler, June 23, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 4:9; and “Jeremiah Van Rensselaer to Peter Gansevoort, Jr., August 8, 1778,” Military Papers of Peter Gansevoort, Jr., 4:33. 109 “John Jay to Philip Schuyler, March 21, 1779, vol. 12, Smith et al., eds.

129 and “those Laws of Honor which might have required it are satisfied.”110 “You have

Talents to render you conspicuous in the Field,” he urged Schuyler, so “gather Laurels for the Sake of your Country” and “leave [your children] also the Reputation of being descended from an incontestibly great Man.”111 While no doubt flattering, Jay’s entreaties were ultimately in vain. Schuyler insisted on resubmitting his resignation on

April 2, citing his “Differences [with] Congress and the other dignified Servants of the

People.”112 Finally, on April 19, Congress reluctantly accepted.

That is not to say, however, that Schuyler no longer played a role in public affairs.

Indeed, he remained a force in shaping rebel policies toward the Quebecois and Indians throughout the remainder of the war. As early as mid-1778 he had begun calling for a second invasion of Quebec to prevent a repeat of the Burgoyne invasion from the previous year, writing to the new President of the Continental Congress Henry Laurens in

March that he feared the British would “approach our Frontier with a Line of Forts from whence the Indians may” be “sent out to harass us.”113 “Perhaps the most, if not only, effectual means to defend such an Intention,” he advised his recipient, “would be” an

“Expedition into Canada thro Ontario”114 In lieu of that, he proposed in another letter to

Laurens in May, “Congress may think it expedient to order Troops to be sent up” to

“burn the Cayuga Town and some of the Seneca Villages.”115 Both suggestions were given careful consideration by Congressional leaders over the next year, and would

110 “John Jay to Philip Schuyler, March 21, 1779, vol. 12, Smith et al., eds. 111 “John Jay to Philip Schuyler, March 21, 1779, vol. 12, Smith et al., eds. 112 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, April 2, 1779,” PCC, Transcripts of Letters from Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler, 2:346. 113 “Philip Schuyler to Henry Laurens, March 15, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 118. 114 “Philip Schuyler to Henry Laurens, March 15, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 120. 115 “Philip Schuyler to Henry Laurens, May 29, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 144.

130 ultimately have profound implications for the nature of rebel relations with the Quebecois and Indians as the war continued.

As Congress weighed its options, it continued to allow its preconceptions regarding both groups to steer the ship. In rebel minds, the Quebecois remained helpless victims of British cruelty while British-allied Indians continued in the role of ‘merciless savages.’ As a result, decades of hardening colonial belief systems regarding Anglo cultural superiority to both cemented into formal policies that left the door open for

Quebecois inclusion in the new nation but closed that door to indigenous communities.

Those policies were rooted in the processes of identity formation by which rebels’ conceptions of Americanness were born. For a brief moment in the opening months of the War for Independence, the practical necessities of military strategy and the ideological promise of a new nation had dovetailed into an impulse among rebel leaders to embrace the commonalities they perceived with other inhabitants of the continent.

Faced with the complications of pursuing that impulse in the real world during the 1775

Quebec Campaign, rebel leaders quickly redirected their dreams away from a union with their indigenous and Francophone neighbors and towards a definition of belonging based on whiteness. Faced with the hardening reality of that definition, fewer and fewer

Quebecois or Indian communities chose to ally themselves to the rebellion.

131 Chapter 3: Lafayette’s Little Irruption: French Reform, Noble Honor, and the

Question of Quebec, 1760-1780

In January 1778, the Continental Congress of the United States of America appointed Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier (better known as the marquis de Lafayette) commander of a planned “irruption . . . into Canada.”1 The appointment is, to say the least, puzzling. Only two short years before, the United States had suffered one of its first major offensive defeats by failing to seize the town and province of Quebec from British forces under Sir Guy Carleton. Furthermore, the marquis himself, though a favorite of the commander-in-chief, General George Washington, was a relatively untested military entity. Finally, the Congressional bureaucracy’s notorious inability to adequately supply Continental troops in the early years of the war (identified by the rebels as one of the root causes of their initial failure in Quebec) remained a constant and overarching worry in any American military venture. With the bulk of the Continental

Army sequestered in winter camp at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, there seemed little reason for Congressional leaders to order ill-supplied rebel soldiers to march northward into known dangers under the leadership of an unknown general. And yet, they did.

The question becomes, then, why Congressional leaders might have approved such an invasion. Numerous biographers of Lafayette himself have viewed the proposed invasion within the context of an attempt by the New England party in Congress

(championed by Horatio Gates) to destabilize the Virginian George Washington’s

1 “Report of the , January 22, 1778,” in Worthington C. Ford et al., ed. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 25 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1904-1937), 10:84-5.

132 position as head of the Continental Army.2 Other scholars of the War for Independence have argued that the proposition enjoyed considerable support.3 According to John

Ferling, for example, the invasion was “extremely popular” and “enjoyed widespread support” among the members of the Continental Congress.4 By tapping into that popularity and proposing a second invasion of Quebec, then, Gates and his supporters hoped to direct Congressional resources away from Washington’s command and divert attention to the northern theater of the war. Believing as he did that he enjoyed substantial influence in that area after his victory at the Battles of Saratoga, Gates no doubt hoped a continued focus on the north might translate into his advancement at Washington’s expense in the middle colonies. Such a focus would have been, Ferling argues, ultimately beneficial to the rebel war effort. “Had Canada fallen hard on the heels of the destruction of Burgoyne’s army,” he writes, “it is difficult to see how Great Britain could have continued to fight.”5

By almost all traditional measures of strategic military value, however, a second rebel expedition into Quebec seemed remarkably ill advised from its very outset. Had it come to fruition the Lafayette expedition would have been faced with many of the same hurdles experienced by the first. Many Congressional leaders were convinced, for

2 See, for example, Olivier Bernier, Lafayette: Hero of Two Worlds (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1983), 61-67; Harlow G. Unger, Lafayette (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002), 63-67; and Laura Auricchio, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered (Knopf, 2014), 57-60. The efforts of Gates and his supporters to supplant Washington have come to be known as the Conway Cabal, after its most vocal member, the Irish volunteer from France General . The existence of the Cabal as a true conspiracy continues to be debated by historians. See Gloria E. Brenneman, "The Conway Cabal: Myth or Reality?,"Pennsylvania History 40, no. 2 (April 01, 1973): 168-77. 3 See John E. Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 290-93. Ferling develops his argument on the subject further in his later book, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009). 4 Ferling, Ascent of George Washington, 169. 5 Ferling, Ascent of George Washington, 171.

133 example, that the Quebecois themselves had little desire to accede to the new union.6 This conviction was most likely accurate given the fact that many of the said Quebecois had participated in an armed revolt against the depredations of rebel military rule during the first invasion a few short years earlier. That revolt had ultimately contributed to the withdrawal of Continental forces from the northern province. At the time, there was little indication that such sentiments had changed. Moreover, according to many, the forces under Lafayette’s command were – like most such rebel troops at the time – both undermanned and undersupplied.7 Any second rebel invasion of Quebecois, therefore, could have produced the same disastrous results as the first.

In light of such considerations, the temptation is to accuse Congressional leaders safely ensconced in government cloisters of enjoying a supreme ignorance of the reality of their new nation’s military circumstances. According to the president of the

Continental Congress, Henry Laurens of South Carolina, however, Congressional leaders were very much aware that they were courting disaster. “I believe & upon good grounds,” he wrote in a letter to George Washington in November 1778, that the “scheme for an expedition into Canada in concert with the Arms of France originated in the breast of

Marquis de Lafayette, encouraged probably by conferences with Count d'Estaing.”8 I

“expressed some doubts” about the expedition to Canada, he continued, but “demurred exceedingly to the Marquis's scheme.”9 Ultimately, he went on, “the business was referred to a Committee” and “considering [the marquis] as a Gentleman of . . . tenacity .

6 See, for instance, “James Lovell to John Adams, December 1, 1777,” vol. 8, Paul H. Smith, et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, 25 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1976-2000). 7 See, for example, “Francis Dana to Elbridge Gerry, February 16, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al., eds. 8 “Henry Laurens to George Washington, November 20, 1778,” vol. 11, Smith et al., eds. 9 “Henry Laurens to George Washington, November 20, 1778,” vol. 11, Smith et al., eds.

134 . . their Report was framed agreeable to his wishes.”10 Yet “if the prosecution of so extensive a project is from the present state of our Army & funds impracticable on our part,” he concluded, “I trust the Marquis will be satisfied with such reasonings in apology for our desisting from the pursuit of his favorite enterprize as our circumstances will dictate.”11

Although it is important to account for a certain degree of attempted political absolution on Laurens’s part, emphasizing Lafayette’s enthusiasm for the proposed second invasion of Quebec during the War for Independence opens a number of suggestive possibilities. These possibilities cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the circumstances of France and the French nobility in the years leading up to the war. Lafayette and the other French volunteers that supported him were operating in the context of massive social and political changes within their home country. As a number of historians have noted, after France’s defeat in the Seven Years’

War King Louis XV’s administration made a concerted effort to reshape the nation’s military apparatus to more closely align with those of other European states.12 These reforms (which brought military expenses under royal control and rewarded talent rather than birth) naturally threatened the status of nobles in French society, who responded by clinging ever more tightly to their perceived place in the world. As a result, French aristocrats like Lafayette who grew to maturity in this period were inculcated with a

10 “Henry Laurens to George Washington, November 20, 1778,” vol. 11, Smith et al., eds. 11 “Henry Laurens to George Washington, November 20, 1778,” vol. 11, Smith et al., eds. 12 See in particular James C. Riley, The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); William Doyle, Officers, Nobles and Revolutionaries Essays on Eighteenth-century France (London: Hambledon Press, 1995); William Doyle. Old Regime France, 1648-1788. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Rafe Blaufarb, "Noble Privilege and Absolutist State Building: French Military Administration after the Seven Years' War," French Historical Studies 24, no. 2 (2001): 223-46.

135 rejuvenated sense of the importance of living lives devoted to preserving that place by defending their own conception of personal, noble, and national honor. This honor could be most easily obtained through military accomplishment and martial glory.

Unfortunately for men like Lafayette, this avenue was severely limited by the French ministry’s reforms.

This can, in part, then, explain the eagerness of many young French noblemen to seek recognition overseas in wars like the British colonial rebellion. More importantly for this discussion, however, it also helps explain the eagerness of Lafayette to pursue the proposed second invasion of Quebec. Not only would the success of such an expedition dramatically improve the military circumstances of their rebel allies, a French conquest of Quebec would effectively erase the dishonor of the province’s surrender to the British in the Seven Years’ War. Furthermore, the young French nobleman no doubt dreamed of being hailed as a hero throughout his homeland for his efforts to regain the national honor lost so recently in his kingdom’s centuries long contest with Britain. Seen in this light, the proposed second invasion of Quebec becomes considerably more comprehensible.

Such motivations can be seen in the writings of Lafayette himself. In his letters to

Henry Laurens, Lafayette made it abundantly clear that his proposal for a second rebel invasion of Quebec was directly connected to his sense of honor as a Frenchman. Such an expedition would be a perfect opportunity, he explained, to drive his country’s “natural and tyrannical ennemy out of the lands they had taken from ‘em” and add luster to the

“name of french man I am honoured with.”13 “We know all that the name of french men

13 “Lafayette to the President of Congress, January 31, 1778,” in Stanley J. Idzerda et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, 5 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 1:268.

136 imposes on to us great duty to deserve it,” he wrote to Laurens, “but no exertions will be forgotten on our part to show ourselves worthy of the country we have had the advantage to be born in.”14 “My honor as well as my love for the french blood,” he told Laurens,

“obliges me” to “gain . . . the hearts of the Canadians, and engage them” to “raise up against the common enemy.”15 From such language, it quickly becomes evident that the marquis was eager to restore the honor he believed his nation had lost in ceding Quebec to Britain after the Seven Years’ War. In proposing a second rebel invasion of Quebec,

Lafayette evidently believed he had found the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately for him, however, he would ultimately discover that his ministry’s views on the subject were somewhat more complex.

French Reactions toward the Loss of Quebec

Generally speaking, the cession of Quebec to Britain during the Seven Years’

War has been portrayed over the years since as no great loss to France or the French

Empire, making Lafayette’s apparent preoccupation with recapturing the province seem somewhat counterintuitive. Often, the philosophe Voltaire is held up as a prime example of the French dismissal of Quebec. This began almost immediately after Quebec’s fall.

The November 23, 1759 edition of London’s Public Advertiser, for instance, contained an unusual piece of gossip from the European continent. “Two Days after the News arrived here of the Taking of Quebec,” it read, “Mons. de Voltaire gave a grand

Entertainment at his House in the Country” in Geneva.16 “A new Piece called Le Patriot

Insulaire was performed,” the Advertiser further reported, “in which all the Genius and

14 “Lafayette to the President of Congress, January 31, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:268. 15 “Lafayette to the President of Congress, January 31, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds, 1:270. 16 Public Advertiser, November 23, 1759, 2.

137 Fire of that celebrated Poet were exhausted in favour of the Cause of Liberty.”17 “After the Play,” it went on, a “magnificent Firework was played off” featuring the “Star of St.

George shooting forth innumerable Rockets.”18 All to celebrate, the article concluded, that “M. de Voltaire now in a free Country enjoys that Liberty and Tranquility in spite of the French.”19 At the time, the Advertiser’s story was no doubt accepted without much question by its readers in London. Voltaire was, after all, a notorious Anglophile who had been imprisoned by French authorities on a number of occasions for his anti-government writings and had even once been exiled from the country altogether.20 What’s more,

Voltaire was among the most vocal of the French philosophes in opposing state colonialism as a boondoggle that exhausted France’s resources and dragged it into unnecessary wars.21 Voltaire had singled out the colony of Quebec for particular scorn in that regard, most famously dismissing the province in Candide as a “few square acres of snow” the same year that it fell to the British.22

Numerous historians and other scholars have used Voltaire as a shorthand for

French attitudes toward the surrender of Quebec in the Seven Years’ War, arguing that many in France concurred with the philosophe in dismissing the colony’s fall to the

British as no great loss.23 The reality, however, was a bit more complicated. While

17 Public Advertiser, November 23, 1759, 2. 18 Public Advertiser, November 23, 1759, 2. 19 Public Advertiser, November 23, 1759, 2. 20 See Ian Buruma, “Voltaire's Coconuts,” in Anglomania: a European Love Affair (New York: Random House, 1998), 21-49. 21 See Frank McLynn, “Wolfe at Quebec,” in 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), 192-222; and Sunil M. Agnani, Hating Empire Properly: the Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). 22 Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism, trans. Burton Raffel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 94. 23 See Richard Cole Harris, and John Warkentin, Canada before Confederation: A Study in Historical Geography (Ottawa: Carleton Univ. Press, 1991), 19; William R. Nester. The and the Conquest of New France (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 1; and Robert Leckie, A Few Acres of Snow: The Saga of the French and Indian Wars (New York: Wiley, 2006).

138 Quebec’s share in the imperial economy was never large and many metropolitan officials considered it of greatest utility simply as a bulwark against British colonial ambitions in

North America, French attitudes towards its capture were anything but dismissive.24 The loss of an entire colony begged serious consideration of the causes and consequences, and it received it from officials in France over the course of the next decade. Even Voltaire was known on occasion to treat the subject with something other than disdain. In his 1774

Eloge funèbre de Louis XV, meant as a critique not only of the dead king’s reign but the penchant of contemporary eulogies for hagiography, Voltaire singled out Louis’s role in

France’s defeat during the Seven Years’ War as particularly worthy of censure. “His deference to the feelings of others made him undertake” the “war of 1756,” he wrote, and

“France lost much blood, more treasure, all Canada,” and “her credit in Europe.”25 “It was [then] necessary for the nation, always industrious, always active,” he continued, “to work for twelve whole years to barely repair some of these immense breaches.”26 The famous author very well may have “like[d] peace more than Canada,” as he wrote to

César Gabriel de Choiseul, duc de Praslin and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in a letter on September 6, 1762, but that didn’t mean that he considered its loss of no consequence.27

24 For an examination of Quebec’s role in the French Empire’s economy, see Dale Miquelon, “Canada’s Place in the French Imperial Economy: An Eighteenth-Century Overview,” French Historical Studies 15, no. 3 (1988): 432–43. For an examination of Quebec’s role as a buffer against British expansion in North America, see W. J. Eccles, “The Fur Trade and Eighteenth-Century Imperialism,” The William and Mary Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1983): 341–62. 25 Voltaire, “Eloge Funèbre De Louis XV (1774),” in OEuvres Complètes De Voltaire, ed. Louis Moland, Vol. 29 (Paris: Garnier, 1877), https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/toutvoltaire/navigate/970/1/. 26 Voltaire, “Eloge Funèbre De Louis XV (1774),” in OEuvres Complètes De Voltaire, ed. Louis Moland, Vol. 29 (Paris: Garnier, 1877), https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/toutvoltaire/navigate/970/1/. 27 “Voltaire to César Gabriel De Choiseul, September 6, 1762,” in The Complete Works of Voltaire, ed. Theodore Besterman (Banbury, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1973), 109:Letter D10693..

139 This may have been even more true after Voltaire had had over a decade to digest the consequences of France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War but could well have been the case in the immediate aftermath of that defeat as well. Voltaire’s personal investments included stock in a company that operated out of the Spanish port of Cádiz conducting trade with French colonies overseas.28 When the British began sinking French merchant ships on the Atlantic during the Seven Years’ War his portfolio took a hit. The loss of

Quebec would have only complicated matters further for him. While early historians accepted the story of Voltaire’s celebration after the fall of Quebec in 1759 as fact, then, it’s likely that the account is at best some garbled version of the truth and at worst a total fabrication.29 After all, the story only appeared in the British press and the play Voltaire was supposed to have performed on the occasion, Le Patriot Insulaire, does not exist.

The idea that few in France recognized Quebec’s potential and therefore did not mourn its loss might pair well with the notion that the province only began to prosper with the ingress of industrious Britons, but the reality is more complex. Rather than celebrating defeat, or simply dismissing it, the news of Quebec’s surrender prompted not only circumspection but outrage among even the most outspoken critics of French colonial policy like Voltaire.

28 Ian Davidson, Voltaire: A Life (London: Profile Books, 2012), 77. 29 See George Warburton, The Conquest of Canada (New York: Harper, 1855), 377; Frank H. Severance, An Old Frontier of France: The Niagara Region and Adjacent Lakes Under French Control (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1917), 2:367; and Robert E. , “Voltaire: Le Patriot Insulaire,” Modern Language Notes 57, no. 5 (1942): 354–55. Pike goes so far as to suggest that Voltaire instead performed Tancrède (a tragedy based on the Norman conquest of Sicily that he was working on at the time) but does not argue that the celebration did not take place. Later scholars have doubted the tale’s veracity, however. See Alan McNairn. Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2014), 18, 252.

140 L’Affaire du Canada

The most immediate concern for the French government in the face of such outrage was the assignation of blame, which it eventually laid at the feet of Quebec’s intendant François Bigot. As the head of that province’s civil administration from 1748 onwards Bigot was a natural target, especially considering the series of corruption charges leveled against him from the very beginning of his tenure in that position.30

During his time as intendant, Bigot had orchestrated a series of agreements with other colonial officials and metropolitan merchants that allowed him and his compatriots to amass fortunes by awarding lucrative trading contracts to those firms in which they held stock and subsequently exempting them from import and export duties. This practice, though relatively common both in Quebec and in Europe, took place on an unprecedented scale during the Seven Years’ War because of the rapid increase in royal expenditures in the colony over the course of that period. In combination with the longstanding use of paper currency in the colony and the scarcity of goods in Quebec as a result of British predations on French shipping in the Atlantic, the colonial graft and flood of metropolitan funds during the war contributed to substantial inflation.31 Goods in Quebec were reportedly seven times as expensive as those in France, complicating the Crown’s efforts to supply imperial troops there.32 Seizing its opportunity the monarchy argued for a direct link between the historic levels of inflation in Quebec and the defeat of French forces in

North America, inflation that it in turn claimed was caused solely by the corruption of

30 J. F. Bosher and J. -C. Dubé, “Bigot, François (d. 1778),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4 (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bigot_francois_1778_4E.html. 31 J. F. Bosher, “The French Government’s Motives in the Affaire Du Canada, 1761–1763,” The English Historical Review XCVI, no. CCCLXXVIII (1981): 72-73. 32 Bosher and Dubé, “Bigot, François.”

141 Bigot and his associates. In all the French government charged nearly fifty colonial officials with various crimes related to what it contended was a concerted effort to defraud the Crown and people of France, but Bigot received by far the most attention.

Two main interpretations exist among historians to explain the role of these trials in post-Seven Years’ War France, which were known collectively as l'Affaire du Canada

(the Canadian Affair). The first, introduced by Guy Frégault in his 1948 biography

François Bigot, administrateur français, posits that the intendant’s prosecution was a diversion from the role the Crown itself played in the loss of Quebec.33 By laying the blame for the fall of Quebec on Bigot as a convenient scapegoat, the Crown might bolster flagging public support for a monarch (Louis XV) that was far less popular than his father (Louis XIV). The other, from J.F. Bosher’s 1981 article “The French Government's

Motives in the Affaire du Canada, 1761-1763,” suggests that the Crown also sought to avoid repaying the full total of its colonial debts.34 By claiming that those debts were in fact worth a fraction of their face value as a result of colonial mismanagement, the metropolitan government hoped to evade a substantial portion of the 83 million livres it owed creditors in both France and Quebec. Ultimately the monarchy succeeded in that regard, paying only 37,607,000 livres to those creditors after Bigot’s conviction on

December 10, 1763.

Both explanations have merit. The Crown certainly sought to avoid blame for both the fall of Quebec and its overall defeat in the Seven Years’ War. Many in France held Louis XV’s famous maîtresse-en-titre (official mistress) Jeanne Antoinette Poisson,

33 Guy Frégault, François Bigot, administrateur français, 2 vols. (Montréal: Les Études de l’Institut d’Histoire de l’Amérique française, 1948). 34 See Bosher, “French Government’s Motives.”

142 marquise de Pompadour (more commonly known as Madame de Pompadour), responsible for their country’s failures in the war. Since her accession to that position in

1745 Pompadour had played an active role in French diplomacy and policymaking, a role that extended to certain military decisions when the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756.

She played a key role in convincing Louis to approve a treaty of alliance with France’s former adversary Austria that same year. The resultant Treaty of Versailles precipitated the “Diplomatic Revolution” of that year, which realigned the European balance of power when Britain abandoned its partnership with the gradually weakening Austrians in favor of one with the increasingly powerful Prussians under Frederick II.35 After seven years of war in Europe in which French armies led by Pompadour’s favorites suffered catastrophic defeats at the hands of Prussian forces like the 1757 Battle of Rossbach, popular resentment toward the marquise was nearing a boiling point.36 Her patronage of the arts

(which included operas, dramas, and ballets in which she often participated herself) only worsened matters, spreading perceptions of Pompadour’s indecency, lavish expenditures, and penchant for fiddling while the empire burned.37 As time went on much of this perception began to spill over onto the king himself, lending the search for someone to blame even more urgency.38

Bigot proved a more than suitable target in this regard. Like the king, the married intendant was known not only for the lavishness of his court at Quebec but for the companionship of his mistress Angélique Renaud d’Avène des Méloizes as well. What’s

35 Jeremy Black, “Essay and Reflection: On the ‘Old System’ and the ‘Diplomatic Revolution’ of the Eighteenth Century,” The International History Review 12, no. 2 (1990): 301-323. 36 Thomas E. Kaiser, “Madame De Pompadour and the Theaters of Power,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 4 (1996): 1025-1044. 37 Kaiser, 1030-1035. 38 Kaiser, 1042-1044.

143 more, just as Louis XV’s critics accused him of allowing the Madame de Pompadour to unduly influence his decisions as ruler of France, Bigot’s contemporaries spoke of

Angélique’s powerful sway in the colonial halls of power. Indeed, observers in Quebec even used much the same language to describe Angélique as those in the metropole did with the marquise. In his Mémoires sur le Canada (Canadian Memoirs) Louis-Léonard

Aumasson de Courville, the secretary of Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de

La Jonquière (governor of New France from 1749 to 1752), described Angélique as

“young, vivacious,” and “full of spirit,” with a “rather sweet and obliging character” and talent for “conversation [that] was cheerful and amusing.”39 It was a description that could just as easily have fit the marquise, who, according to François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis, comte de Lyonnais, “had all the graces, all the freshness,” and “all the gaiety of youth.”40

The overlaps between Angélique and Pompadour did not end there, however.

According to de Courville, together with her husband (colonial adjutant Michel-Jean-

Hugues Péan) Angélique “made herself a small court of persons of her character” and they all “made immense fortunes.”41 Under Bigot’s auspices as civil administrator of the colony “jobs were given to whom she wanted,” the secretary recounted, and “her recommendation was worth as much as the greatest merit.”42 Echoing accusations in the metropole that the Madame de Pompadour and her favorites were of common birth, de

Courville further complained that those who received such positions were “domestics,

39 Louis-Léonard Aumasson de Courville, Mémoires Sur Le Canada Depuis 1749 Jusqu'à 1760 (Quebec: Impr. de T. Cary & Cie., 1838), 63. 40 Bernis François-Joachim de Pierre de., Memoires Et Lettres De François-Joachim De Pierre, Cardinal De Bernis (Paris: Soc. dEdit. littéraires et artistiques, 1903), 109. 41 de Courville, Mémoires, 63. 42 de Courville, Mémoires, 63.

144 lackeys, and people from nothing” whose “ignorance” and “baseness were no obstacle.”43

Angélique’s favorites had, according to de Courville, caused much the same suffering in

Quebec as the Madame de Pompadour’s had in France. “Soon the [province’s] finances felt the greed of all these people,” he concluded, and the “people groan[ed] under their arbitrary power.”44 Such accounts would no doubt have resonated in France, where René-

Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d'Argenson, complained that the “mistress is the prime minister and is becoming more and more despotic such as no other favorite has ever been in France.”45 By identifying Bigot as the poster child for Quebec’s loss, then,

Louis XV and his advisors had found themselves a nearly perfect proxy. Public outrage could be redirected away from the king and his influential mistress toward a lesser official with his own such accomplice.

For his own part Bigot was careful in his defense to lay blame at the feet of the king’s ministers rather than the king himself, particularly Nicolas René Berryer, comte de

La Ferrière and Minister of the Marine (the department of the French government responsible for overseeing the colonies) during the Seven Years’ War. The “Minister’s dispositions,” Bigot wrote in his Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot (Brief for

François Bigot), were such that “he no longer had any hope” but in a “personal audience” with the king “which he hoped to obtain on his return to France” and “in which he expected to be in a state of satisfaction on all points.”46 Bigot never received his audience

43 de Courville, Mémoires, 63. 44 de Courville, Mémoires, 63. 45 René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marquis d’Argenson, Journal Et mémoires Du Marquis D’Argenson; publiés Pour La première Fois daprès Les Manuscrits Autographes (Paris: Chez Renouard, 1859), 6:472- 473. 46 François Bigot, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot: Ci-Devant Intendant De Justice, Police, Finance & Marine En Canada accusé: Contre Monsieur Le Procureur-général Du Roi En La Commission, Accusateur (Paris: De limprimerie de P. Al. le Prieur, imprimeur du roi, 1763), 240.

145 with the king. Instead, he, his mistress’ husband, and dozens of their allies were arrested and thrown in the Bastille on November 17, 1761. As Barthélemy François Joseph

Mouffle d’Angerville later wrote in Vie privée de Louis XV (Private Life of Louis XV)

Berryer sought “victims who did not have unduly powerful friends” but would still

“create a sensation,” finding “all the necessary conditions in the leaders and administrators of Canada.”47 Bigot certainly agreed with d’Angerville’s assessment, testifying in his Mémoire that he was “sure of his innocence” but that it was “to the prison to which he knew that he was destined” because of “some prevention against him.”48 His exoneration would “render to the King a faithful subject,” he promised, and

“to the disillusioned Public a useful fellow citizen.”49 Unfortunately for the former intendant it was not to be.

Instead, the commission of judges that presided over l’Affaire du Canada found

Bigot guilty of all charges on December 10, 1763, declaring that he had “tolerated, favored, & committed himself the abuses, embezzlements, maladministrations, & infidelities mentioned at the trial.”50 The “most important” of the crimes for “which he was responsible,” the commission made sure to note, however, were those committed on the “part of the finances.”51 Bigot, it seemed, had served his purpose. After the trial, the

47 Mouffle d’Angerville, Vie privée De Louis XV, Ou, Principaux événemens, particularités Et Anecdotes De Son Regne (Londres: Chez John Peter Lyton, 1788), 4:58-59. D’Angerville’s work is, as Robert Darnton points out, part of a larger class of anti-government libelles in pre-Revolutionary France. Nonetheless, Darnton concludes that Vie privée is a “fairly balanced account of Louis XV’s reign.” See Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (London: Fontana Press, 1997), 220. 48 Bigot, Mémoire, 2. 49 Bigot, Mémoire, 2. 50 Jugement Rendu Souverainement Et En Dernier Ressort, Dans Laffaire Du Canada, Par Messieurs Les Lieutenant Ge̓ ne̓ nral De Police, Lieutenant Particular Et Conseillers Au Châtelet, Et Siege Pre̓ sidial De Paris, Commissaires Du Roi En Cette Partie. Du 10 De̓ cembre 1763 (A Paris: De lImprimerie dAntoine Boudet, Imprimeur du Roi, & du Châtelet., 1763), 59. 51 Jugement, 59.

146 Crown revived the defunct office of controller to collect the fines it levied against Bigot and the rest of the colonial officials convicted of similar charges in l’Affaire du Canada.

The fortunes the French government confiscated from these men (which included 1.5 million livres from Bigot himself) were not nearly enough to settle the debts the monarchy had accrued in defending its empire from the British, however.

Moreover, while l’Affaire du Canada had enabled Louis XV’s administration to both avoid some level of blame and at least partially ease its own financial burden it did little to shore up flagging popular support for the ministry’s fiscal policies. As James

Riley notes in his 1986 book The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The

Economic and Financial Toll, the war may not have been as catastrophic for the French economy as many historians have argued but it did produce fundamental challenges to the perceived right of the Crown to intervene in the imperial economy.52 Over the course of the war the French government had first chosen to fund the military buildup on credit and – when that credit proved insufficient to the task – later moved to raise taxes without ensuring that the amount collected would meet its needs. These decisions not only left the monarchy with massive debt at the close of the war, they prompted a public movement to more firmly situate the tax system under the operating authority of the parlements as representatives of the people. Ultimately Louis XV and his supporters were able to resist calls for parliamentary oversight of the tax system but the debt remained, the king even going so far as to deliberately hide its true size from the parlements and broader public in the interest of further protecting royal prerogatives over financial policy. With the parlements unwilling to endorse increases in taxation to pay down a debt of which their

52 Riley, Seven Years War.

147 king refused to fully apprise them, the royal treasury’s woes only grew as time passed and popular resentment toward the Crown’s control over the French economy grew in tandem.

Reforming the French Military

The consequences for the royal treasury of France’s defeat in the Seven Years’

War reverberated far beyond the parlements’ concerns regarding the initial debt.

Determined to return the French military to the preeminent position it had enjoyed as a fighting force in Europe under Louis XIV, Louis XV’s ministers implemented a broad series of reforms designed to streamline the operations of the army and navy by bringing them firmly under centralized state control. Masterminded by Étienne-François, duc de

Choiseul, Secretary of the Marine and brother of the duc de Praslin, such reforms sought not only to expand the number of French military personnel but also to further professionalize the training of those personnel and provide them with the latest in combat technology. For the navy, those goals translated into the establishment of a school for naval engineers, the construction of government naval facilities for refitting and supplying ships along the French coast, and a projected expansion of the royal fleet from forty-seven ships of the line at the beginning of 1763 to eighty within the following four or five years.53 For the army, Choiseul’s objectives meant the implementation of a permanent regimental structure, creation of a centralized system of personnel records, and ministerial assumption of supply expenditures traditionally levied from individual

53 See Étienne-François de Choiseul, Ordonnance Du Roi Concernant La Marine, Du 25 Mars, 1765 (Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale, 1765) and Jonathan R. Dull, “Epilogue: Toward a New War, 1763- 1774,” in The French Navy and the Seven Years War (Bison Books, 2007), 245-56.

148 unit commanders.54 Concurrent with these changes, Choiseul also moved to demobilize much of the French military’s officer corps and subsequently rebuild it with a stronger emphasis on merit-based advancement. Together, these adjustments drove the royal debt to new and greater heights. Over the course of the following two decades, as France continued to spend on credit to expand and upgrade its military forces, the Crown’s total debts more than doubled from 2.325 billion livres in 1764 to 5 billion in 1787.

As Rafe Blaufarb has observed, the military reforms Choiseul encouraged after the Seven Years’ War threatened a rupture between the Crown and French nobility.55 The centralization of military expenditures under the Crown was particularly troublesome for nobles. To Choiseul, this change offered to relieve the fiscal burdens of those forces’ noble officer corps and open the door to the members of elite families whose financial difficulties had precluded them from service. For many French aristocrats, on the other hand, the change undermined elite conceptions of honorable military service, which they perceived as a sacrifice freely made with noble generosity rather than as a labor purchased with royal funds. By assuming control of military expenses, Choiseul’s administration thus – in the eyes of many nobles – violated the honor of elite officers who now served at the financial pleasure of the king rather than on their own terms. This, in turn, jeopardized the delicate balance of power between the Crown and aristocracy, exacerbating noble resentment toward Louis XV.

54 See Étienne-François de Choiseul, Ordonnance Du Roi, Concernant L'infanterie Françoise: Du 10 Décembre 1762 (Paris: Lille, 1762) and Rafe Blaufarb, “The Merits of Birth: Lineage and Professionalism in the Old Regime,” in The French Army, 1750-1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester (GB): Manchester University Press, 2002), 12-45. 55 Blaufarb, “Noble Privilege and Absolutist State Building.”

149 This rift was only deepened by the evolution of popular thought regarding the notion of honor itself, which many in France began to expand after the Seven Years’ War to encompass social classes outside of the elite. As Jay M. Smith has argued, many in

Louis XV’s kingdom laid blame for their country’s military losses in the Seven Years’

War at the feet of its noble officer corps.56 The corruption and unwarranted privilege of that corps, the argument went, had left France’s soldiers in the hands of a uniquely untalented and self-serving cadre of military leaders. In light of that conclusion, many outside of the French nobility began to redefine the concept of honor as something to which Francophones of any social class were capable of aspiring rather than an ideal specific to the aristocracy. With the monarchy becoming increasingly unpopular after the

Seven Years’ War Louis XV’s ministry deliberately encouraged this process. Over the course of the post-war period, the king’s ministers funded a series of propagandistic works that promoted the idea that honor – defined by selfless sacrifice – was a quality all

French citizens were capable of demonstrating. This, according to the ministry, obliged those citizens to selflessly sacrifice themselves for the wellbeing of their country as good patriots. The equalizing tendencies of such thinking only made the French aristocracy more jealous of the notion of honor as their own unique prerogative and heightened the importance of that concept to elite definitions of nobility. Because the challenges to those definitions were ultimately rooted in perceptions of noble failure during the Seven Years’

War, avenging France’s losses in that conflict became all the more important to that country’s upper class.

56 Jay M. Smith, “Patriotic Resurgence and the Nationalization of Honor, 1760s-1780,” in Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 143-81.

150 In that, at least, the nobles and Choiseul could agree. They diverged, however, in their estimation of how best to meet their shared aims. The honor of French military nobles was a function of class power, and as such could not afford to differentiate between the avenging of slights large or small. Either could represent a fundamental challenge to the delicate position of those nobles at the top of their social hierarchy. As such, all of France’s military losses in the Seven Years’ War were perceived as equally devastating to noble honor regardless of their relative impact on the empire. Choiseul, meanwhile, faced the reality of an economic situation of which only he and few others were truly cognizant. So, he chose to focus his energies toward avenging the losses of the

Seven Years’ War in ways that might improve the treasury’s finances. Of primary importance to Choiseul was protecting French interests in the Caribbean. During the negotiations for the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the minister had managed to regain control of profitable sugar colonies like Guadaloupe in exchange for ceding Quebec to the British.57

According to François-Joseph Ruggiu, Choiseul’s actions were part of a larger “no territory policy” that sought to push the French Empire in a more mercantilist direction that might do something to alleviate the pressures the Seven Years’ War had placed on the royal treasury.58 In accepting this trade the British heeded calls from the inhabitants of their North American colonies, who argued that the addition of Quebec to the empire would secure the western borderlands of those colonies for further expansion by removing the French threat that had held their growth in check. Choiseul, meanwhile,

57 Helen Dewar, “Canada or Guadeloupe?: French and British Perceptions of Empire, 1760– 1763,” Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 4 (2010): 637-60. 58 François-Joseph Ruggiu, “Falling into Oblivion?: Canada and the French Monarchy, 1759-1783,” in Revisiting 1759: the Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective, ed. Phillip A. Buckner and John G. Reid (University of Toronto Press, 2012), 113-53.

151 sought to alleviate the financial burdens placed on the French government by avoiding the costs of administering huge swaths of territory like Quebec.59

Choiseul also considered the removal of the French threat to Britain’s North

American colonies a double-edged sword for his nation’s enemies. Many among

Europe’s elite had long believed that the root of British colonists’ loyalties to their metropole lay in the presence of Quebec as a threat to the security of their borders, and

Choiseul was no exception. With British colonists no longer in need of imperial protection from the Quebecois threat, the theory went, they would come to resent the control their empire enjoyed over North American affairs.60 As early as 1748, Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm had observed in his Travels into North America that the “English colonies in North America, in the space of thirty or fifty years, would be able to form a state by themselves, entirely independent of Old England” but their “dangerous neighbours are sufficient to prevent the connection of the colonies with their mother country from being quite broken off.”61 Nearly two decades later, Choiseul echoed

Kalm’s conclusion that the “English government has therefore sufficient reason to

59 French ministers thought in similar terms regarding the colony of Louisiana. See, for example, the opinions expressed in the debate over transporting colonists from Quebec to the southern colony in “Examen du project de faire passer les habitans du Canada a la Louisiane,” f. 298-302, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. “Mémoire proposant le transfert des Canadiens à la Louisiane,” f. 305, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. “Memoir exposant les avantages pour la France d'abandonner le Canada pour la Louisiane,” f. 307-311, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. “Memoire pour la Transmigration proposee du Canada a la Louisiane,” April 1761, f. 313-316, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. “Moyen de peupler la Louisiane: encouragements a donner aux habitants du Canada pour passer au Mississippi,” June 1761, f. 319-320, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. “Mémoire sur les limites de la Louisiane en cas de cession du Canada en Angleterre,” July 15, 1761, f. 321, Lettres et journaux de Bougainville (NAF 9406), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. 60 See William John Eccles, “The Role of the American Colonies in Eighteenth-Century French Foreign Policy,” in Essays on New France (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 144-55. 61 Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America: Containing Its Natural History, and a Circumstantial Account of Its Plantations and Agriculture in General: with the Civil, Ecclesiastical and Commercial State of the Country, the Manners of the Inhabitants, and Several Curious and Important Remarks on Various Subjects (London: Printed for T. Lowndes, 1772), 207.

152 consider the French in North America as the best means of keeping the colonies in their due submission” in a 1765 “Mémoire” to Louis XV.62 Without France’s presence in

North America Louis could look forward to the “separation of [English] possessions with

England,” the minister assured his king, and the “American revolution that will come” will “put England back into a state of weakness where it will no longer be feared in

Europe.”63 But, Choiseul cautioned (based on reports from the growing coterie of informal spies he was funneling into the British colonies), “this event is remote.”64

France, it seemed, would have to remain patient if its dreams of vengeance were to be fulfilled.

Unfortunately for Choiseul, he was no longer in power by the time his prophecy was fulfilled. In 1770 he was removed from his position for nearly precipitating a war with Britain over the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, a conflict for which

Louis XV believed France remained unprepared. The administration that held sway as the spirit of rebellion began to engulf the British colonies several years later, however, shared much the same mindset as its predecessor. In 1776, the French foreign minister Charles

Gravier, comte de Vergennes, urged Louis XV’s son Louis XVI to begin secretly funneling aid to the rebel colonists, arguing that the British ministry would “hope to maintain their popularity and dominance by settling with America and by employing the enormous mass of forces set in motion to rectify the conditions of the last peace treaty

62 Kalm, Travels into North America, 207. 63 Étienne François de Choiseul, “Mémoire de Monsieur de Choiseul Remis au Roi en 1765,” in Le Journal De Sçavans (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1881), 178. 64 Choiseul, “Mémoire,” 178. For an overview of French intelligence activities in the British colonies after the Seven Years’ War, see Josephine Fennell Pacheco, “French Secret Agents in America, 1763-1778” (PhD diss., 1950).

153 against which they have ceaselessly risen.”65 “The English of all parties,” Vergennes contended, “seem unanimously convinced that a popular war against France” would

“finish, or at least doze, their domestic discussions and extinguish their national debt.”66

It was thus in France’s interests, he concluded, to encourage the “continuation of the war, at least for a year” because “a year of gain for measures of vigor and foresight can in many ways change the face of business.”67 Keeping the British colonial rebellion alive at least into 1777 would therefore, according to Vergennes, prevent France’s foes on either side of the Atlantic from uniting once more and potentially targeting those territories returned to the French in the 1763 Treaty of Paris (namely those in the Caribbean that posed a threat to Britain’s dominance of oceanic trade). In the meantime, he suggested, the French could prepare their military for a conflict that promised to be fought on a scale not unlike that of the Seven Years’ War over a decade earlier.68

Presented with this proposal, Louis XVI requested that his chief advisor Jean-

Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas, solicit position papers on the subject from his ministers. Vergennes’ paper, authored by Joseph-Mathias Gérard (brother of the first minister to the United States, Conrad-Alexandre Gérard), argued that supporting the rebellion would cause British commerce “irreparable loss” while France’s would “rise by as much.”69 The French might also be able, Gérard portended, to “recover some of the

65 Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, “Considérations,” in Henri Doniol, ed., Histoire De La Participation De La France a I'etablissement Des Etats-Unis D'Amerique: Correspondance Diplomatique Et Documents, 5 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886-1899), 1:275 66 Gravier, in Doniol, ed., 1:275 67 Gravier, in Doniol, ed., 1:276 68 Vergennes came to this conclusion in part as a result of information provided by France’s diplomatic agents in London, who suggested that war with France might unite the rebel colonies and Britain if the rebellion were not prolonged. See, for example, “Charles-Jean Garnier to the comte de Vergennes, May 15, 1776,” B.F. Steven's Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773-1783, 9:868, John Hay Library, Brown University. 69 Joseph-Mathias Gérard, “Réflexions,” in Doniol, ed., 1:244

154 possessions which the English took away in America.”70 “We do not speak of Canada,”

Gérard wrote, but the “land fishery, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Île Royale, etc.”71 Gérard and his superior Vergennes thus seem to have shared much the same perspective and aims on the subject as Choiseul a decade earlier. Supporting the British colonial rebellion would protect the profitable Caribbean sugar colonies secured by Choiseul in 1763, augment French commerce in the interest of servicing the ballooning royal debt, and perhaps even return the fisheries of Newfoundland to France’s control (a sticking point in the Treaty of Paris that had almost brought negotiations to a halt). Like Choiseul, then,

Vergennes and his supporters considered improving the French imperial economy to be of chief concern and regaining Quebec as of no concern whatsoever.

Vergennes encountered stiff opposition, however, from Louis XVI’s minister of finance Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne. According to Turgot, who accepted his position with the promise that there would be “No Bankruptcy,” “No

Increase of Taxes,” and “No Loans,” supporting the British colonial rebels would cause irreparable damage to the already beleaguered French economy and treasury.72 “The king knows the situation of his finances,” Turgot reminded Louis, and that “despite the savings and improvements already made since the beginning of his reign, there is between the receipt and expense a difference of 20 millions.”73 “There are only three ways to fill this deficit,” Turgot went on, “with an increase in taxes, a bankruptcy,” or a

“considerable saving.”74 The first two, contravening as they did Turgot’s fundamental

70 Gérard, in Doniol, ed., 1:244 71 Gérard, in Doniol, ed., 1:244 72 “Anne Robert Jacques Turgot to Louis XVI, August 24, 1774,” in W. Walker Stephens, ed., Life and Writings of Turgot, Comptroller-General of France 1774-6 (London: Longmans, 1895), 86. 73 Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, “Memorandum,” in Doniol, ed., 1:282. 74 Turgot, in Doniol, ed., 1:282.

155 precepts as minister of finance, he dismissed out of hand. The third, he warned, would be derailed in the event of a war with Britain. When Louis XVI ascended to the throne in

1774, Turgot recalled, “he found his military and his navy in a state of weakness that would have been hard to imagine.”75 “In order to restore them and restore to France the degree of force and consideration she must have” for a war with Britain, he contended, the “King must spend when the state of his finances” might allow it.76 They did not currently do so, Turgot advised, and the royal treasury would suffer greatly if it were burdened by the expenses of attempting to restore the French military prematurely. A war with Britain at that moment, Turgot thus concluded, “must be avoided as the greatest of misfortunes, since it would make it impossible for a long time, and perhaps forever, a reform absolutely necessary to the prosperity of the State.”77 In the eyes of the minister of finance, then, France was simply not ready to support the rebel British colonies regardless of its future aims.

On that point at least, Vergennes’ ally and minister of war Claude Louis, comte de

Saint-Germain, could agree with Turgot. Though Saint-Germain issued his own memorandum supporting Vergennes’ proposition with the Latin maxim “si vis pacem, para bellum [if you want peace, prepare for war],” the one-time veteran of Frederick the

Great’s army had long had his doubts about France’s military preparedness.78 When

Maurepas, resentful of Turgot’s influence over Louis XVI, sided with Vergennes in the dispute and convinced the king to approve support for the rebels, those doubts became all

75 Turgot, in Doniol, ed., 1:282. 76 Turgot, in Doniol, ed., 1:282. 77 Turgot, in Doniol, ed., 1:282. 78 Francis Wharton and John Bassett Moore, eds., The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 6 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1889), 1:339.

156 the more pressing. Like Choiseul, whose own reforms of the army and navy had ground to a halt with his removal from office in 1770, Saint-Germain identified the root of

France’s military difficulties in the promotion of officers based on privilege rather than talent. In his memoirs, published the year after his death in 1778, Saint-Germain complained that with the noble officers promoted to the highest positions through their privilege and the lower-born promoted to only the middle ranks through talent “all striving is destroyed.”79 The “first class instantly obtains the highest grades as if by right,” he wrote, “while the second class, by the sole misfortune of its birth or poverty, is condemned to waste its life in the subaltern grades.”80 As a result, he claimed, the “first class does not need to work to succeed” and the “second does not work because its efforts would be useless.”81 If France was going to confront Britain militarily once more, Saint-

Germain believed, such issues would first need to be addressed.

So, in March of 1776, as Louis XVI’s ministers debated support for the rebel

British colonies, Saint-Germain issued his Ordonnance du roi, portant règlement sur l’administration de tous les corps [Ordinance of the king, laying down regulations for the administration of all the corps]. The Ordonnance instituted a strict promotion schedule guaranteeing advancement for officers of the middle ranks and enabling army administrators to veto fast-track promotions for nobles. Saint-Germain’s counterpart as head of the ministry of the Marine Antoine Raymond Jean Gualbert Gabriel de Sartine, comte d'Alby, implemented similar regulations in the navy, cutting the number of officers by forty percent in the process. Choiseul may have been out of favor at the royal court but

79 Claude-Louis Saint-Germain, Mémoires De M. Le Comte De St. Germain (Amsterdam: Chez Marc- Michel Rey, 1779), 137. 80 Saint-Germain, Mémoires, 137. 81 Saint-Germain, Mémoires, 137.

157 at least some of his policies lived on, and with them arose further resentment among the

French military aristocracy.

Lafayette and the Second Invasion of Quebec

Cut off from earlier avenues of advancement in the French military, some of those nobles began to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Among their destinations was the rebel

British colonies, where they exaggerated their accomplishments and expertise in exchange for inflated ranks in the Continental Army. Desperate for signs of favor from sources of foreign support, the leaders of the rebellion in the Continental Congress eagerly approved a multiplicity of requests from the nobles of France and other European states for generalships in their nascent army. Besieged by European soldiers of dubious qualifications who demanded he place them in command of entire divisions in his small army, George Washington reached his breaking point in 1777. Writing to Virginia

Congressman Benjamin Harrison on August 19 of that year, Washington complained of his “difficulty with the numberless applications for Imployment by Foreigners, under their respective appointments” by Congress.82 It “adds no small embarrassment to [my] command,” he informed Harrison, and I am “abundantly perplexed by the different tempers I have to do with” as a result.83 In hindsight, Washington could have picked a better time to reach his breaking point. It was the arrival of one European soldier in particular that had prompted his complaints: the marquis de Lafayette.

The next fall, the secretary of France’s delegation to the United States, François, the marquis de Barbé-Marbois, recorded in his diary that the commander of rebel forces

82 “George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, August 19, 1777,” in Edward G. Lengel, ed., This Glorious Struggle: George Washington's Revolutionary War Letters (University of Virginia Press, 2010), 123. 83 “George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, August 19, 1777,” in Lengel, ed., 123.

158 had said of Lafayette that “I love him as my own son” while “tears fell from his eyes.”84

In the first month of the young noble’s time with the Continental Army, however, it appears that Washington largely viewed him as yet another ambitious European whose presence at his side must simply be tolerated. It was Lafayette’s performance at the in September 1777 that seems to have changed his mind. After a successful attack by British forces under General William Howe forced Washington’s left flank into retreat, Lafayette briefly rallied the rebel center before being wounded in the leg. The young marquis’ actions had evidently swayed the rebel general’s opinion of him.

In his later memoirs, Lafayette recalled overhearing the rebel commander tell his surgeon upon seeing the marquis’ wound after Brandywine to “take care of him as if he were my son, for I love him the same.”85 The following year, Washington recalled that he had learned “at the Battle of Brandy Wine” that the young noble “possesse[d] a large share of bravery and Military ardor.”86 Within just a short time, then, Lafayette had earned the respect of the Continental Army’s commander where so many others had failed.

With this unique influence to support him, Lafayette had – within reason – his pick of commands in the Continental Army. Rather than choose to remain by

Washington’s side or pursue opportunities in the southern colonies where much of the war’s focus was beginning to shift, however, he chose to seize upon the idea of a second rebel invasion of Quebec. His request to command such an expedition came at a

84 “Diary Entry, September 12, 1779,” in Francis Marbois, Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The Letters of Francois, Marquis De Barbe-Marbois during His Residence in the United States as Secretary of the French Legation 1779-1785, ed. Eugene Parker Chase (New York: Duffield and Company, 1929), 116. 85 “Memoir for 1779,” in Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette (London: Saunders and Otley, 1837), 64. 86 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 1 [-3], 1778,” in The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2007-).

159 particularly precarious time in the history of France’s relationship with the United States.

Indeed, at that moment, the Franco-American alliance that would eventually secure the rebellious colonies’ independence from Britain was in its most nascent stages. During this period, most rebel leaders were operating under the assumption that France was about to openly declare its support for their rebellion after the surrender of British

General John Burgoyne’s forces at the Battles of Saratoga in the fall of 1777. This assumption was fulfilled only a short time after Lafayette’s appointment to lead an invasion of Quebec, when France officially recognized the United States and declared war on Great Britain in February and March of 1778.

Lafayette’s proposed invasion of Quebec thus arrived at the very moment at which rebel leaders were most determined to treat any and all things French with the utmost delicacy and diplomacy. This was a determination Lafayette himself seems to have encouraged, writing that a second invasion of Quebec might “be of some weight for declaring war to France” and could convince French leaders that it was to the “advantage of my country to take now a more active part in the present contest.”87 Presented with such language, it is somewhat understandable that Congressional leaders responded in the manner they did. After all, in the period just before the official beginning of the French- rebel alliance, most rebel leaders would have been eager to prove the utility of their rebellion as a means of satisfying French military goals. The most immediate method of doing so would have been supporting Lafayette’s desire to lead an expedition into the north.

87 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, January 31, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds, 1:269.

160 Despite their eagerness to satisfy Lafayette’s desires, however, Congressional leaders seem to have agreed to engage once more with their neighbors to the north only with considerable reluctance. This was a reluctance they made abundantly clear as they planned for the second invasion of Quebec. In their official description of the intended expedition, for example, Congressional leaders explicitly declared that they had only agreed to support Lafayette’s expedition out of deference to the sensitivity of the new

French-rebel alliance. “If the reduction of Halifax and Quebec are objects of the highest importance to the allies,” the description read, “they must be attempted.”88 This reluctance was echoed in Congressional leaders’ private letters as well. Most were relatively staid in their objections to the expedition. Quebec “must in a few years fall into the general Union without loss of Blood or expense of Treasure on our part,” Henry

Laurens wrote to South Carolina Governor John Rutledge, so the advantages of such an expedition are in no way an “equivalent for the risque we take by diverting our own forces in the present State of affairs.”89 “They will fall to us of Course,” Massachusetts representative James Lovell wrote to the newly appointed ambassador to France, John

Adams, but first “I wish to have them acquainted wth. the nature of our union.”90 “I would not wish,” he continued, “to be bound to carry an Expedition into their Country till their Friendship was certain and quite General.”91 Others, however, were anything but calm in their condemnation of Lafayette’s proposed invasion. “Good God!” wrote Francis

88 Ford et al., eds., 12:1045. 89 “Henry Laurens to John Rutledge, February 3, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al., eds. 90 “James Lovell to John Adams, December 1, 1777,” vol. 8, Smith et al., eds. 91 “James Lovell to John Adams, December 1, 1777,” vol. 8, Smith et al., eds.

161 Dana to his fellow Massachusettsan Elbridge Gerry, “how absurd to attempt an expedition into Canada, when you cannot feed this reduced army!”92

It would seem clear, then, that many Congressional leaders were opposed to a second invasion of Quebec. For delegates like Henry Laurens, James Lovell, and Francis

Dana, such opposition appears to have been founded upon a number of complimentary concerns. First, the belief that the 1775 campaign had been lost by rebel error rather than won by British or Quebecois skill had been confirmed by the victory at Saratoga. The accession of Quebec to the United States was thus considered relatively inevitable and not something that necessarily required immediate action on the part of the United States.

Second, Congressional leaders were becoming less and less convinced that the Quebecois were yet ready or willing to accede to the union. Indeed, the Quebecois had proven as much in the latter months of the 1775 invasion itself, when they openly rebelled against the Continental troops that occupied their province and scavenged for food in their homes. Third, Congressional leaders were less than eager to order an expedition that would in all probability be just as difficult to supply as the first had been. A new expedition to Quebec, then, might threaten the American war effort just as dramatically as the first.

In his own opposition to Lafayette’s proposed invasion, Commander-in-Chief

George Washington deliberately played into such concerns. This was reflected in his

Committee at Camp’s official report advising the abandonment of the expedition in

February 1778. First and foremost, the authors of the report advised, Congressional leaders should consider whether or not the rebels had the “Money to prosecute the War in

92 “Francis Dana to Elbridge Gerry, February 16, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al., eds.

162 that Country.”93 After all, they reminded their readers, “Canada never produced Flesh sufficient to feed an Army at any Time.”94 Thus, a second northern invasion would not only “require an increased Number of Men” to overcome the shortcomings of the first, it would also necessitate “a vast Increase of Expence” in order to ensure that those men were sufficiently supplied.95 Such an expense was, the Committee at Camp noted, well beyond the capabilities of the rebellious colonies. In short, the Committee warned, any troops that took part in a second invasion of Quebec “cannot be fed.”96 If a second invasion was approved, and the United States was forced to attempt to organize extended supply lines without the resources to do so, the Committee proclaimed, it would

“effectually ruin every Plan either of Offence or Defence during the next Campaign.”97

Perhaps more importantly, however, the authors of the report suggested, such an invasion would also “so lower our Reputation in the Eyes of Europe that none could be found either to trust or assist us.”98 Not only would a second invasion of Quebec profoundly threaten the strategic welfare of the rebel war effort by diverting much needed resources away from the main theater of the war, the report asserted, it would also endanger the position of the United States internationally. These concerns were confirmed by Washington himself in a letter to Laurens several months after the report issued by his Committee at Camp. In the letter, Washington focused much of his attention upon the strategic difficulties presented by a second invasion of Quebec. Like his

Committee at Camp, Washington concluded that it would be “impracticable, either to

93 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al.,, eds. 94 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al.,, eds. 95 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al.,, eds. 96 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al., eds. 97 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al.,, eds. 98 “Committee at Camp to Henry Laurens, February 11, 1778,” vol. 9, Smith et al., eds.

163 furnish the men – or the other necessary supplies for prosecuting the plan.”99 While such objections formed the bulk of the General’s letter on the proposed expedition, however,

Washington reserved primacy of place for more diplomatic considerations. “It seems to me impolitic,” his letter began, “to enter into engagements with the Court of France . . . without a moral certainty of being able to fulfil our part.”100 “A failure on our part,” he warned, “would certainly occasion in [the French] . . . a degree of distrust and discontent that might be very injurious to the union.”101 Furthermore, he wrote, a French-rebel defeat in Quebec “could not fail to give a very unfavourable impression of our foresight and providence” and “would serve to weaken the confidence of that Court in our public councils.”102

A second invasion of Quebec, then, would place the United States in an extremely delicate diplomatic position. If the invasion failed (which, according to Washington, it surely would), the French-rebel alliance could be irreparably damaged. Unwilling to fully trust its resources to an impetuous young ally, the Crown of France could very well focus its attention on other theaters of what had rapidly become a global conflict with Great

Britain. Without France’s full military support, the rebels would be unable to secure the resources or manpower necessary to force a British recognition of colonial independence.

Furthermore, without the full diplomatic trust of France behind them, the United States would be unable to seek the support of other European powers. This would be especially true in light of the ‘lowered reputation’ the report of the Committee at Camp warned would be produced by a second rebel defeat in the north. Thus, if a second invasion of

99 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 11, 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds. 100 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 11, 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds. 101 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 11, 1778,” in Crackel, et al., eds. 102 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 11, 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds.

164 Quebec were approved by Congressional leaders, the Continental war effort could very well founder and ultimately fail as the nascent French-rebel alliance broke down under the weight of defeat.

Ultimately, Congressional leaders withdrew their support for Lafayette’s proposed invasion upon the pretext of Washington’s recommendations. This withdrawal allowed such leaders to extricate themselves from a situation that they believed might potentially threaten the fate of their young nation. At the same time, however, that extrication also paved the way for further complications in the diplomatic relationship between the rebels and France. By far the most immediate and pressing concern was the readily apparent fact that Congressional leaders’ decision to reject Lafayette’s proposed expedition threatened to tarnish the young French officer’s sense of honor.

Satisfying Lafayette’s Honor

Such complications were made readily apparent by Lafayette himself as he began to realize his position as the head of the proposed expedition was rapidly becoming untenable. “All the continent knows where I am” and “what I am sent for,” he wrote to

Henry Laurens in February 1778, and while the “world has theyr eyes fixed upon me . . .

I’l be obliged to end an operation which may be looked on as undertaken” in a

“ridiculous way.”103 “I am reduced to wish,” he continued, that I had “never put the foot in America or thaught of an american war.”104 If he was not compensated with “some glorious and figting chief command,” he concluded, “I’l be then induced to repair home.”105 Lafayette repeated these concerns to Washington shortly thereafter. “I find

103 “Marquis de Lafayette to Henry Laurens, February 19, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:296. 104 “Marquis de Lafayette to Henry Laurens, February 19, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:296. 105 “Marquis de Lafayette to Henry Laurens, February 19, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:297.

165 myself much concerned and unhappy in this affair,” he wrote, and “I am afraid it will reflect on my reputation and I schall be laughed at.”106 “My fears upon that subject are so strong,” he continued, “that I would choose to come again only a volunteer unless

Congress offers me means of mending this ogly business by some glorious operation.”107

“Unless some means are given to me” to “prevent people from laughing,” he concluded, I will be made “ridiculous to the world.”108

The intimation of these messages was clear: if Lafayette’s honor was not satisfied, he would be forced to return to France to salvage his reputation. Such a threat carried real import. Lafayette’s council was listened to closely by Louis XVI and his advisers as the French commander with the closest ties to the Continental Army.

Moreover, Lafayette had received his military training alongside the king, a relationship that provided the young French nobleman with a profound level of personal influence in the French court. Further complicating matters, the large majority of French volunteers active in the Continental Army at the time held close personal ties to Lafayette as well.

Indeed, many had ventured to the Americas upon the specific recommendation of the marquis himself and could very well have chosen to return to their native country in his absence out of a sense of solidarity. Lafayette’s threat to return home, then, could not only usher in the withdrawal of French volunteers almost entirely from the Continental

Army, but also foster the very sort of French distrust for the rebel cause that

Congressional leaders had hoped to avoid by abandoning a second invasion of Quebec.

106 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, February 27, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:324; “Lafayette to George Washington, February 19, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:301. 107 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, February 19, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:301. 108 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, February 27, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:324.

166 Satisfying Lafayette’s sense of honor in the wake of the aborted second invasion of Quebec was therefore considered paramount to maintaining the French-rebel alliance in its earliest stages. More than any other rebel leader, George Washington would play a pivotal role in that maintenance by soothing the wounded pride of Lafayette personally and, by extension, salvaging the potentially threatened nascent French-rebel alliance.

Such efforts were driven primarily by Washington’s attempts to personally assure

Lafayette that his reputation had in no way suffered from his involvement in the aborted second invasion of Quebec. “You seem to apprehend that censure proportioned to the disappointed expectations of the World, will fall on you,” Washington wrote to the marquis in March of 1778, but “it will be no disadvantage to you to have it known in

Europe, that you had received so manifest a proof of the good opinion and confidence of

Congress as an important detached Command.”109 “I am persuaded,” he continued, “that everyone will applaud your prudence in renouncing a Project, in pursuing which you would vainly have attempted Physical Impossibilities.”110 “However sensibly your ardour for Glory may make you feel this disappointment,” he concluded, “you may be assured that your Character stands as fair as ever it did, and that no new Enterprise is necessary to wipe off this imaginary stain.”111 By writing his letter in such terms, Washington seems to have been attempting to present the abandonment of the northern expedition as the product not of his own doing or that of Congressional leaders, but of Lafayette himself.

In the process, he presented his ordeal as further evidence of the noteworthy “prudence” the marquis displayed despite his youth. By doing so, he effectively inverted Lafayette’s

109 “George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, March 10, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:342. 110 “George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, March 10, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:342-3. 111 “George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, March 10, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:343.

167 narrative of humiliation, allowing the young French volunteer to extricate himself from the expedition to the north without fear of damaging his much-valued reputation.

Washington’s involvement, more than any other’s, seems to have allowed

Lafayette to remove himself from command of the aborted second invasion of Quebec without overly damaging his reputation.112 His words of comfort to the marquis were further supplemented by Washington’s suggestion that Lafayette be promoted to the command of an entire brigade in the Continental Army, a suggestion that was heartily embraced by Congressional leaders.113 Washington expressed his thoughts on the utility of such a move in a blunt letter to Henry Laurens in early November 1778. “It appears to me,” he mused to Laurens, that “from a consideration” of Lafayette’s “illustrious and important connections” and the “consequences, which his return in disgust might produce, that it might be adviseable to gratify him in his wishes” for a command.114

“Several Gentlemen from France” have already “gone back disappointed in their expectations” of command, he warned, and it was only because the marquis had

“interested himself to remove their uneasiness” that they did not make “any unfavorable representations upon their arrival at home.”115 Should Lafayette return home similarly dissatisfied, then, not only would the rebels alienate an important political ally but

112 Washington’s success in salving Lafayette’s wounded pride in this instance fits nicely within the larger context of their relationship as described by other historians. See David A. Clary, Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship That Saved the Revolution (New York: Bantam Books, 2007); and James R. Gaines, For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions (New York: W.W. Norton &, 2007). Clary in particular portrays Lafayette’s humiliation and Washington’s response in terms similar to my own. Clary, however, tends to overlook the connection between this incident and the larger context of French and American motivations in the early stages of the Franco-American alliance (152-162). 113 “George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, March 20, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:372-3. 114 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 1 [-3], 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds. 115 “George Washington to Henry Laurens, November 1 [-3], 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds.

168 Washington himself would lose his buffer against the many European soldiers who crowded his camp seeking fortune and fame.116

Evidently, the General hoped such an offer would fully satisfy Lafayette’s wounded sense of honor and, by extension, extricate his young nation from a delicate diplomatic conundrum without losing the French support that had been so dearly earned at Saratoga. This hope was, apparently, not without foundation. Shortly thereafter,

Lafayette agreed to withdraw his support for a second invasion of Quebec. “Since your last letter,” he wrote to Washington in late March of 1778, “I have given up the idea” of a northern expedition.117 The “only condition I have made, and the only favor I have asked,” he continued, “has been not to be under any orders but those of General

Washington.”118 “I seem to have had an anticipation of our future friendship” he confided to the General, and “what I have done out of esteem and respect for your excellency’s name and reputation, I schould do now out of mere love for General Washington himself.”119 By guiding Lafayette through his escape from the doomed second invasion of Quebec without tarnishing his reputation, then, Washington had managed to rescue the nascent French-rebel alliance from the brink of potential disaster. Moreover, he had further cemented the young marquis’s loyalties to himself and the rebel cause, loyalties

116 Lack of advancement and its impact on French soldiers’ sense of honor during the rebellion played a frequent role in motivating those soldiers to consider returning to France, something seen throughout many of such soldiers’ accounts of the rebellion. See, for example, “Baron de Kalb to the comte de Broglie, April 10, 1778,” Stevens, 8:808. Denis Jean Florimond Langlois du Bouchet, “Journal d'un emigre; ou Cahiers d'un etudiant en philosophie, qui a commence son cours des son entree dans le monde,” #4600, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. “Voïage au continent américain par un Français, en 1777, et réflexions philosophiques sur ces nouveaux républicains,” Français 14695, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. 117 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, March 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:381. 118 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, March 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:381. 119 “Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington, March 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:381.

169 that would continue to play a key role in the Franco-American alliance throughout the

War for Independence.

French Policies toward Quebec

Lafayette never forgot his dream of reclaiming Quebec, however. In fact, within only a few months after Lafayette’s proposed second invasion of Quebec fell apart, he was writing once more to Henry Laurens to insist that “Canada is necessary to the liberties of America.”120 His insistence only increased with the arrival of a French fleet to

North America under Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, the comte d'Estaing. “As soon as the French flag is seen near Canada,” he assured the Comte in a letter on July 14,

1778, “half of the inhabitants and savages will declare themselves for us.”121 “The taking of the British West Indies would be advantageous for our country,” he acknowledged in a letter the following month, but “Canada necessarily concerns us” and a “corps of six or ten thousand Frenchmen destined for the conquest of Canada next year” would be a

“powerful diversion.”122 “That,” he concluded, “combined with the love that the

Canadians and the savages have for the French, should put British affairs in extremely bad straits.”123 With the arrival of French forces operating under the official onus of the

French Crown, Lafayette evidently believed he might be able to secure the troops and material support necessary to get the northern invasion of his dreams off the ground.

Unfortunately for Lafayette, d’Estaing had been explicitly instructed not to invest his forces in such a project. He did have “authorization to give declarations in the name of the king to promise the Canadians and the Indians the protection of His Majesty,” he

120 “Marquis de Lafayette to Henry Laurens, June 12, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:75. 121 “Marquis de Lafayette to Comte d’Estaing, July 14, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:104. 122 “Marquis de Lafayette to Comte d’Estaing, August 24, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:145. 123 “Marquis de Lafayette to Comte d’Estaing, August 24, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:146.

170 noted in his summary of his instructions from the Crown, as long as they “cease to recognize the supremacy of England.”124 However, any suggestion “that I must contribute to the conquest of Canada,” his instructions read, should be met with “refusal.”125 The instructions to the first French ambassador to the United States, Conrad-Alexandre

Gérard de Rayneval from the comte de Vergennes, were even more explicit. The possession “of Canada, by England, will be an element of disquiet and anxiety to the

Americans,” Vergennes confided to Gérard, “which will make them feel the more the need they have of the alliance and the friendship of the king, and which it is not his interest to remove.”126 “If Congress” proposes an invasion, he continued, “Mr. Gerard will answer that the king will always lend himself with eagerness to everything that may suit the United States” but “that the uncertainty and the variety of his engagements do not permit him to enter into any formal agreement to that effect.”127 In a letter to Adrien-

Louis de Bonnières, comte de Guînes, Vergennes put his stance even more bluntly.

“Canada is the jealous point” between France and the rebels, he wrote, and “we must make them understand that we do not think about it at all.”128

The Continental Army’s failure to capture the northern province in the first year of the war had evidently done little more than reinforce Vergennes’ opinions. When the rebels were forced to retreat from Quebec the following year, the minister assured

France’s ambassador to Spain, Charles, marquis d’Ossun, that although the “Americans

124 Comte d’Estaing, “Extraits de mes instructions du 27 mars 1778,” in Doniol, ed., 3:238. 125 Comte d’Estaing, “Extraits de mes instructions du 27 mars 1778,” in Doniol, ed., 3:237. 126 “Comte de Vergennes to Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, March 29, 1778,” in Wharton and Moore, eds., 2:526. 127 “Comte de Vergennes to Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, March 29, 1778,” in Wharton and Moore, eds., 2:526. 128 “Comte de Vergennes to Comte de Guînes, August 7, 1775,” in Doniol, ed., 1:156.

171 have been routed in Canada” it was “not a drawback for us.”129 After all, he argued, the

“English acquire by this success a foot of ground from which they will be able” to

“exhaust themselves in this civil war.”130 Quebec, apparently, would for Vergennes only ever be a means of widening the divide between Britain and its rebellious colonists.131

The French minister had little cause, in his own mind, to encourage the success of rebel arms there. France’s national honor could be regained elsewhere.132 So, if Lafayette wanted support for his scheme to invade Quebec, he would need to find it in another quarter.133

Lafayette Returns to France

That fact did little to dissuade the marquis from working to achieve his aims.

Indeed, as 1778 progressed, the young nobleman continued to seek allies in his quest for a second invasion of Quebec. With Lafayette once more seeking to drum up support for his personal cause, it fell to Washington to once more distract him. Lafayette’s talents,

Washington suggested in a letter on September 25, 1778, would serve the rebellion far better in old France rather than new. I have heard that “you have entertained thoughts my dear Marquis of paying a visit to your Court – To your Lady – and to your friends this

129 “Comte de Vergennes to Marquis d’Ossun, June 14, 1776,” in Doniol, ed. 1:437. 130 “Comte de Vergennes to Marquis d’Ossun, June 14, 1776,” in Doniol, ed. 1:437-38. 131 This opinion, again, was informed in part by Vergennes’ communications with French diplomats in London. See, for example, “Charles-Jean Garnier to the comte de Vergennes, June 4, 1776,” Stevens, 9:872. “comte de Beaumarchais to the comte de Vergennes, December 2, 1776,” Stevens, 9:908. 132 This opinion is echoed in ministry reports throughout this period. See, for example, Chevalier de Ricard, “Mémoires politiques et militaires sur la situation respective de la France et de l'Angleterre à l'occasion de la guerre des Colonies,” December 1776-August 1777, Français 14612, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France. 133 Indeed, Lafayette attempted on a number of occasions to advocate for such an expedition in his correspondence with Vergennes himself, each time to no avail. See “Marquis de Lafayette to the comte de Vergennes, June 1, 1779,” Stevens, 17:1605. “Marquis de Lafayette to the comte de Vergennes, July 13, 1779,” Stevens, 17:1607. “Marquis de Lafayette to the comte de Vergennes, July 18, 1779,” Stevens, 17:1609. “Marquis de Lafayette to the comte de Vergennes, May 20, 1780,” Stevens, 17:1625.

172 Winter,” he wrote, “but waver on acct. of an expedition into Canada.”134 “Friendship induces me to tell you,” he continued, “that I do not conceive that the prospect of such an operation is so favourable at this time as to cause you to change your views.”135 “In a word,” he concluded, “the chances are so much against the undertaking that they ought not to induce you to lay aside your other purpose in the prosecution of which you shall have every aid.”136 You will “carry with you,” he informed the marquis, “every honourable testimony of my regard, & entire approbation of your conduct, that you can wish.”137 By writing thus, Washington intended not only to distract Lafayette from his northern dreams, but once more reassure him that his reputation was as lustrous as it had ever been. Most likely, Washington believed that by doing so he could potentially turn the marquis away from his pretensions of seizing Quebec and for all. Sending his young protégé back to France would also have the added benefit of planting Lafayette once more in the French court, where he could eagerly advocate for the rebel cause in ways that rebel diplomats simply couldn’t.

Washington’s gambit worked, but only partially. Lafayette agreed to sail for

Europe, but prior to his departure he wrote to Henry Laurens that the “great and important article” of his time in France would be “this of the Resolv’d expedition into

Canada.”138 “His excellency Gal. Washington finds there would some difficulties,” he told Laurens, but “I Confess I feel sanguine for such an expedition.”139 “I schall ever be fearfull for [your] Safety and liberty,” he warned, if you make a “peace without joining

134 “George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, September 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:183. 135 “George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, September 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:183. 136 “George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, September 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:183. 137 “George Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, September 25, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:183. 138 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, November 29, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:205. 139 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, November 29, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:205.

173 these provinces to the United States.”140 On December 18, 1778, just prior to his departure, he issued a proclamation to the Indians of Quebec, promising them that they would “soon see us arrive in Canada” and urging them to “keep the promise you have given [your fathers].”141 What’s more, he wrote to Timothy Bedel of Vermont the same day asking him to supply him with a steady stream of intelligence regarding the state of northern affairs. “I wish to Receive the answers to my Canadian letter, to my adress to the indians, and also the intelligence brought by Captain Traversis [a rebel spy in Quebec] and others,” he wrote to Bedel, and these “Canadian letters of importance” should “be sent to me at Versailles.”142 I “hope to be back in a very few months,” he told Bedel, and

“flatter myself I schall have the pleasure to see you among my countrymen of

Canada.”143 Evidently, the young marquis would not be as easily dissuaded as

Washington and others had hoped.

Lafayette’s Hopes Are Dashed

Indeed, within a few weeks of Lafayette’s return to North America on April 27,

1780, he once more began maneuvering for a northern invasion. On May 25, he issued yet another proclamation, this time to the French-speaking subjects of Quebec. “The paternal love that has always moved the heart of the king for the inhabitants of Canada,” he declared, “have determined His Majesty to send to an American port land and sea forces capable of accomplishing this great purpose.”144 “At the moment of their arrival,” he continued, “the generals of the two allied nations will promptly act together to fulfill

140 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, November 29, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:205. 141 “Marquis de Lafayette to the Canadian Indians, December 18, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:214; 213. 142 “Marquis de Lafayette to Timothy Bedel, December 18, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:211-212. 143 “Marquis de Lafayette to Timothy Bedel, December 18, 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 2:211. 144 “Proclamation to the Canadians, May 25, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:36.

174 the wish of the Congress and that of the king in working for the independence of

Canada.”145 Since the “French gladly fly to the aid of their oppressed brothers,” he informed his audience, “they do not doubt that their brothers will hasten to throw off the yoke of the common enemy.”146 It was, as proclamations go, in largely the same vein as others made to the Quebecois throughout the war. Evidently, however, it was the last straw for the French ministry.

So, in a letter on June 5, 1780, Anne-César, Chevalier de La Luzerne (Gérard’s successor as French ambassador to the United States) made the position of the ministry regarding Canada clear to Lafayette once and for all. “I believe, sir, I should be very frank with you in regard to an expedition against Canada,” he told Lafayette, for “we must agree that we are not in a position to concern ourselves with a foreign goal.”147 “It is surely not with the intention of subjecting Canada to the Thirteen States that you think of the expedition, Luzerne wrote, assuming that Lafayette wished to regain Quebec for

France, but “we would very likely provoke [the rebels’] complaints, discontent, and perhaps even defection if we were to devote ourselves to a foreign expedition” for our own ends.148 In short, he concluded, it is important not to lose sight of the face that the object of the alliance and the aid sent by the king is to liberate the Thirteen States.”149 By the end of the month, Lafayette had responded to his chastisement, promising to abandon his hopes for a second invasion of Quebec. “General Washington does not focus his attention on this project,” he wrote to Luzerne on June 30, and “speaks of it only as a

145 “Proclamation to the Canadians, May 25, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:36. 146 “Proclamation to the Canadians, May 25, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:36. 147 “Chevalier de la Luzerne to Marquis de Lafayette, June 5, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:52. 148 “Chevalier de la Luzerne to Marquis de Lafayette, June 5, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:52. 149 “Chevalier de la Luzerne to Marquis de Lafayette, June 5, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:52.

175 possibility.”150 “The independence of the United States seems to me to be the first objective,” he wrote with chagrin, and “I agree that if we have sufficient means to achieve, this advantage will be the most agreeable of all for France and for America.”151

Thus, for the first time in almost three years, Lafayette, at least for the moment, shut the door on his dreams for a northern invasion.

Lafayette and Indian Affairs

That did not mean, however, that Lafayette’s involvement in northern affairs was at an end. Even before his dreams of a second invasion of Quebec had been dashed for good, Lafayette found himself pulled into Indian affairs in the north on the suggestion of

Philip Schuyler. The New Yorker was evidently eager to trade on France’s perceived sway over Native groups. This development would have a number of consequences as the war progressed, consequences that extended into the immediate post-war period and beyond. For one, the importance Lafayette and others attributed to his presence at negotiations with the Native communities of the north helped to further salve his wounded pride after the aborted expedition to Quebec by reaffirming his idealized notions of the preeminence France enjoyed in North America prior to the Seven Years’

War. For another, it allowed France to not only encourage the rebels’ dependence on their new allies but reestablish a market for French manufactured goods on the frontier as well.

Finally, Lafayette’s presence as an agent of France at treaty negotiations encouraged

Native hopes for a return to the politics of the pre-Seven-Years’-War era when indigenous communities were able to play the imperial interests of Europe off of one another to preserve their autonomy. By playing upon these hopes, rebel leaders sought to

150 “Marquis de Lafayette to Chevalier de la Luzerne, June 30, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:62. 151 “Marquis de Lafayette to Chevalier de la Luzerne, June 30, 1780,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 3:63.

176 pursue their aim of territorial expansion westward by proxy, using the figure of Lafayette as a symbol for French influence in the borderlands to gain and then abuse the trust of

Indian leaders.

The marquis’ first foray into Indian diplomacy was in March 1778 at a conference with representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy in Johnstown, New York. According to

Lafayette’s later memoir, the meeting went fairly well. The Iroquois “adopted M. de

Lafayette and gave him the name Kayewla [fearsome horseman],” the memoir read, and from then on “whenever the army needed Indians, or there was any business to be conducted with those tribes, they always had recourse to the influence of M. de Lafayette, whose necklaces and words the Indians respected.”152 Indeed the young nobleman continued to play a relatively active role in northern Indian affairs throughout the war, particularly among the rebel-allied Oneidas. Perhaps his most prominent part in those affairs, however, came after the United States had won its independence, during the 1784

Treaty of Fort Stanwix. With Lafayette’s assistance, agents of the new nation worked assiduously to dispossess the Iroquoian communities that remained within the boundaries of the United States of their lands. French honor, it seemed, only extended so far.

Indeed, the focus of French honor had narrowed considerably in geographic terms over the previous two decades. With the loss of Quebec in the Seven Years’ War,

France’s leaders had turned their gaze firmly away from North America and toward a new vision of what their empire might be. Recouping the honor lost in that conflict should, such leaders believed, center on sabotaging France’s British enemies rather than regaining surrendered territory. Members of the aristocracy like Lafayette, meanwhile,

152 “Memoir of 1778,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 1:247.

177 chose an alternative vision, one that focused with increasing intensity on recovering the very territories the French ministry sought to move beyond. Neither of these visions offered more than nominal space for Indians in their perception of how things should be.

The Quebecois, meanwhile, had a place in the aristocratic mindset alone, the French ministry viewing them as little more than a potential weakness within the British Empire they might be able to exploit. With the ministry eventually winning out over the aristocracy, what little hold Quebec enjoyed over the future of France loosened entirely.

Realizing that France would – despite constant rumors to the contrary for well over a decade – never seek to regain its lands in North America, the Francophone and indigenous inhabitants of the continent made their beds as best they could.

178 Chapter 4: Clash of Confederacies: The St. Lawrence Indians and the War for

Independence, 1760-1781

Generally speaking, historians’ characterization of Native participation in the northern theater of the American War for Independence follows a common narrative. In this narrative, young warriors eager to prove themselves in battle, disregard their elders’ preference for neutrality, and eventually drag their communities into the fight.1 The story of the indigenous communities in the St. Lawrence River Valley of Quebec complicates that narrative.2 These groups, like many others across the eastern half of North America, initially favored neutrality but eventually opposed the rebellion. They did so not because of the internal persuasions of their young warriors, however, but the external pressures of nearby British officials and distant Native confederacies. These pressures were rooted in the decade and a half of interactions that took place in the northern borderlands as a result of the British conquest of Quebec fifteen years earlier.

At the same time, individual Indians from the St. Lawrence region notably supported the rebels. They did so for a variety of reasons, from family connections to personal ambition to the hope that France might once more rule in Quebec. Their relative success in recruiting others of their community as rebel allies depended largely on the individual circumstances of that community. Louis Cook (Atiatoharongwen) enjoyed

1 See Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972); Joseph T. Glatthaar and James Kirby Martin, Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007); and Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2007). 2 Historians examining individual communities in the St. Lawrence area have observed this fact. See “Odanak: Abenaki Ambiguity in the North,” in Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 69- 89; and Thomas Peace, “Maintaining Connections: Lorette during the Eighteenth Century,” in Thomas Peace and Kathryn Magee Labelle, eds., From Huronia to Wendakes: Adversity, Migrations, and Resilience, 1650-1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 76-109.

179 more success than others as a resident of a large town (Kahnawake) with longstanding ties to rebel-leaning merchants in Albany. Louis Vincent (Sawatanen), on the other hand, had very little as the inhabitant of a small village (Wendake) that was closer to British authorities in the city of Quebec and beholden to the British-leaning Native groups in the

Great Lakes region. Joseph-Louis Gill (Magouaouidombaouit), meanwhile, hailed from a community (Odanak) with equal connections to both Britain and its rebellious colonists and as a result enjoyed only mixed success in his endeavors. Regardless, their efforts

(informed by their experiences in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War) were forged in the fires of the rebel invasion of the northern province in 1775 and continued in the campaigns that followed.

The experiences of Native groups and individuals over the course of those events also did much to reshape the political landscape of the St. Lawrence River Valley. The

Kahnawakes, whom both the British and Iroquois had endeavored to establish as the head of a Seven Nations Confederacy made up of the St. Lawrence River Valley’s Indian inhabitants, lost much of their influence in Native Quebec as a result of their intermittent support for the rebels. Groups who proved less willing to entertain an alliance with the rebels, meanwhile, may not have lost their sway in the Native St. Lawrence but nonetheless lost their standing in British eyes when they proved unwilling or unable to restrain those of their inhabitants who refused to toe the party line. With the balance of power in Quebec thus in flux, the powerful Indian confederacies bordering the province sought to more aggressively exert their influence over the Native communities of the St.

Lawrence River Valley. It was an effort that had been building momentum since the earliest days of the British conquest of Quebec.

180 The Fall of Quebec

The Native communities of the St. Lawrence River Valley, Jesuit mission villages whose residents were known to the French as sauvages domiciliés (domiciled savages), faced cultural divisions that European observers often preferred to overlook. The

Mohawks of Akwesasne (St. Regis) and Kahnawake (Sault St-Louis or Caughnawaga),

Onondagas of Oswegatchie (La Présentation), and Hurons of Wendake (Lorette) spoke

Iroquoian. The Abenakis of Odanak (St. Francis) and Wôlinak (Bécancour) spoke

Algonquian. The Mohawks and Nipissings of Kanesatake (Deux-Montagnes) spoke both.

These linguistic differences spoke to larger cultural ones that ensured that the only unifying factors for all were their partial adoption of Catholicism and conditional alliance with the French. As a result, the leaders of each community and their followers often found themselves at cross purposes and acted accordingly. When they invaded the province of Quebec in 1759, the British were forced to reckon with this reality as best they could.

The Abenakis of Odanak were of particular concern for the British after decades of war between that group and the colonists of New England. In consequence, the British sought the earliest opportunity to revenge themselves against that group after their invasion of Quebec began in 1759. At 5 AM on October 4 of that year, Major Roger

Roberts Amherst stormed the town with his men, tomahawking and bayonetting many of the inhabitants while they still slept. “The enemy had no time to recover themselves,”

Roger recalled proudly in his memoirs, “or to take arms in their own defence.”3 He estimated the death toll at 200, the French at thirty. Regardless, the Abenakis that

3 Robert Rogers, Reminiscences of the French War; Containing Roger’s Expeditions with the New-England Rangers under His Command, ed. Caleb Stark (Concord, NH: L. Roby, 1831), 87-88.

181 survived the attack accepted the invitation of the Mohawks of Akwesasne to make a temporary home at that town until their own could be rebuilt.

Witness to the cruelty shown the Odanaks, most of the Indians of the St.

Lawrence River Valley began reaching out feelers for peace as the British cemented their hold on the province of Quebec in the fall of 1760. The most prominent of these efforts took place on September 15 and 16, 1760 in a meeting with Sir William Johnson at

Kahnawake in which the leaders of the St. Lawrence Indians sought to formalize the exact nature of their new alliance with the British. For the most part they sought to retain as much of their previous lives as possible. The Kahnwakes in particular expressed concern that their lucrative trading relationship with the merchants of Albany remain in place, while others sought to replace France’s financial support for their priests with

Britain’s. “We beg,” the Native delegates at that meeting declared to Johnson, that “you will not be worse than our former Friends the french.”4 The import of their message was clear. They hoped for and expected to weather the transition from one ruler of Quebec to another with as little change to their existences as possible.

By speaking as they did to Johnson, the St. Lawrence Indians thus sought to both establish an alliance with Britain in terms familiar to them and improve those matters which had caused friction with the French. Johnson, however, had his own plans for the new alliance. Relations with the St. Lawrence Indians offered him an opportunity to expand his diplomatic efforts into three overlapping spheres of influence in Native

America. The Hurons of Wendake had well-established connections to the Hurons in the

Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions as a result of their migration to those areas in the

4 “Indian Conference, September 16, 1760,” in William Johnson, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-1965), 13:165.

182 face of Iroquois aggression during the Mourning Wars of the seventeenth century. The

Abenakis of Odanak had similar ties to the broader Wabanaki Confederacy of northern

New England that had spent so many years terrorizing the British colonists. In Johnson’s mind, however, primacy of place went to the Mohawks of Kahnawake, who shared a common bond with the Iroquoian group he knew best.

The choice to locate the proceedings at Kahnawake was no coincidence. It was rooted in Johnson’s vision for what the St. Lawrence Indians should be under his superintendency. He had made his earliest attempts to achieve that vision in the summer of 1760, advising General Jeffrey Amherst that he believed the St. Lawrence Indians should be “treated as part of the Confederacy who are our Friends [the Iroquois].”5 It was a belief rooted in Johnson’s conception of the Native groups of the St. Lawrence River

Valley as “chiefly Emigrants from the Mohocks and the other Five Nations,” a view that suited his designs nicely.6 By thinking of Quebec’s indigenous communities as an offshoot of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Mohawks in particular, Johnson could incorporate them into a preexisting diplomatic network with which he was intimately familiar and in which he had an ever-growing prominence. In the process, he hoped also to extend his influence over Huronia and the Wabanakis, diplomatic networks he clearly considered subordinate to the Iroquois. By situating his diplomacy with the St. Lawrence

Indians in Kahnawake (the most influential and populous Mohawk community in the north), he made a deliberate effort to set that process in motion.

5 “William Johnson to Jeffery Amherst, June 26, 1760,” in Sullivan, ed., 3:261. 6 “Review of the Trade and Affairs of the Indians in the Northern District of America, 1767,” in E.B. O'Callaghan, John Romeyn Brodhead, and Berthold Fernow, eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, 15 vols. (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1853-1887), 7:958.

183 As historians Denys Delâge and J.-P. Sawaya have argued, however, it was in the process of pursuing his own aims that Johnson contributed to the institutionalization of a rival confederacy known as the Seven Nations of Canada.7 Prior to this point, while St.

Lawrence Indians may have at times spoken of their communities as the Seven Nations, they did so as a matter of enumeration rather than out of any real sense of union like that of the Iroquois Confederacy to their south. Because the British (and Sir William Johnson in particular) tended in their diplomacy with Native groups to elevate one community over others and use them as brokers and spokespersons in negotiations, they began formally treating with the St. Lawrence Indians as a single confederacy at the head of which stood the Kahnawakes. With the Native communities of the St. Lawrence River

Valley constituted as a single confederacy and subordinated to the Iroquois, Johnson sought to streamline the diplomatic efforts of his department and exert his perceived authority over the indigenous inhabitants of a newly conquered province. It was by setting this process in motion that Johnson brought the Seven Years’ War to an end for the St. Lawrence Indians.

Pontiac’s War

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the end of the war did not mean peace for the

Indians of the St. Lawrence River Valley. Indeed, within a few short years the St.

Lawrence Indians would be pulled into a growing conflict that came to be known as

Pontiac’s War after the Ottawa leader British officials identified as the head of the Native

7 See Denys Delâge, Les traités Des Sept-Feux Avec Les Britanniques: Droits Et pièges Dun héritage Colonial Au Québec (Sillery, Québec: Septentrion, 2001) and J.-P. Sawaya, Alliance Et Dependence: Comment La Couronne Britannique a Obtenu La Collaboration Des Indiens De La Vallée Du Saint- Laurent (Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 2002). Delâge and Sawaya (Delâge’s graduate student) originally argued the opposite, that the Seven Nations had existed as a confederacy at least since the 1660s, but revised their position after further research. See Sawaya, La Fédération des Sept Feux de la vallée du Saint-Laurent: XVIIe–XIXe siècle (Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 1998).

184 confederacy that opposed their assumption of power in the Great Lakes region. Having heard of the anti-British activities in that area since they began, Johnson had ample time to develop his plan for the British response prior to the actual outbreak of hostilities in

1763. Johnson hoped the St. Lawrence Indians would play a pivotal role in that plan.

The Wendakes did their best to fulfil the superintendent’s hopes diplomatically, sending delegations into the Great Lakes in an effort to persuade the Hurons there to abandon the anti-British confederacy. As one of the least populous Native communities in the St. Lawrence River Valley and the closest to the provincial authorities in the city of

Quebec, the Wendakes had ample reason to maintain their delicate peace with Britain at the time. So, they informed the Great Lakes Indians that they were “resolved Strictly to abide by our Agreement” with the British and “expect you'll do the same.”8 We hoped to

“take you into our Confederacy,” they told the Great Lakes Indians, but “you have behav’d as unworthy Members.”9 We therefore “desire you to recollect your Selves what you are about, in disturbing the Peace of the Confederacy,” they concluded, and

“immediately lay down the Hatchet.”10 The message demonstrated the Wendakes clear awareness of Johnson’s intentions for their community in terms of their relations with the

Great Lakes Hurons.

Unfortunately for both them and the superintendent, however, Pontiac’s War was to prove a reminder of the increasingly limited scope of the Wendakes’ influence outside of Quebec. As Andrew Sturtevant notes, since their group’s diaspora authority in Huronia

8 “Canada Indians to Western Indians, August 25, 1763,” in Sullivan, ed., 10:792. 9 “Canada Indians to Western Indians, August 25, 1763,” in Sullivan, ed., 10:793. 10 “Canada Indians to Western Indians, August 25, 1763,” in Sullivan, ed., 10:793.

185 had become more and more centralized in Detroit.11 From that location, rather than

Wendake, Huron leaders influenced the decisions of their sister communities in North

America in order to enforce a unified policy toward European actors. The Wendakes’ message to the Great Lakes Indians thus had little chance of changing the course of events absent the approval of the Detroit Hurons.

Ultimately, then, Johnson found that he would have to resort to a more militant solution. Once again he sought to utilize the St. Lawrence Indians in his plans, believing their presence in any retaliatory expeditions he sent into the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley would convince the communities there that France’s departure from the continent was permanent. This time, it was the Kahnawakes who proved most eager and willing to cooperate with his designs, evidently relishing their elevation over the other Native communities in the St. Lawrence River Valley in the British-Indian alliance system. A recent legal inquiry into the Kahnawakes’ land rights also no doubt incentivized their support for the British. The Kahnawakes had, for nearly half a century, been locked in a struggle with their Jesuit priests over the issue of land ownership.12 The Jesuits, for their own part, claimed to serve as seigneurial landlords for Kahnawake territory, and as such rented parcels outside the town to Quebecois habitants as tenants. The Kahnawakes themselves, meanwhile, acknowledged no such claim and instead sought to administer their territory according to traditional Native conceptions of land ownership.13 An inquiry convened in Montreal in 1762 to investigate the Jesuits’ seigneurial claim to their

11 See Andrew Sturtevant, “Over the Lake: The Western Wendake in the American Revolution,” in Peace and Labelle, eds., 42-75. 12 See Karol Pepin, “Les Iroquois et les terres du Sault-Saint-Louis: étude d'une revendication territoriale (1760—1850)” (MA thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2007). 13 See Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

186 territory had found in their favor after decades of dispute under the French, ordering that the “Indians of Sault S'. Louis be put in possession, and enjoy peaceably to themselves” all the lands surrounding Kahnawake.14 As a result, they responded eagerly to Johnson’s requests for assistance during Pontiac’s War, volunteering to contribute warriors to the expeditions Johnson planned against the anti-British confederacy.

Johnson took them up on that offer, arranging a meeting between them and the commander of the expedition intended for the Great Lakes, Colonel John Bradstreet.15

According to Johnson’s record of that meeting, the Kahnawakes and Iroquois present declared that “they were fully determined to make use of the Ax” against “any Nation who were Enemies to the English” in the “most hearty, and warm manner that Indians were ever heard to do.”16 When Bradstreet set out for the Great Lakes in August, a strong contingent of Kahnawakes accompanied him. Together, they set off in good spirits.

Unfortunately, it was not to last. In fact, Bradstreet and his Native allies almost immediately began butting heads over what they considered the proper conduct of the campaign.

As it turned out, when the Iroquois and Kahnawakes had sworn to “make use of the Ax” against “any Nation who were Enemies to the English,” they reserved the right to determine which Native groups were truly their European ally’s enemies. Three days after Bradstreet’s expedition set out on August 6 it was met by delegates from the

Hurons, Delawares, and Shawnees at the town of Sandusky in the Ohio country, who,

14 “Translation of the Sentence of the Court of Field Officers at Montreal held by Order of his Excellency Major General Gage for the trial of the Dispute between the Indians, & Jesuits concerning the Lands at Sault St. Louis,” in Sullivan, ed., 10:377. 15 For Bradstreet’s account of the proceedings at prior to the campaign, see “John Bradstreet to Thomas Gage, July 12, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. (AAS). 16 “Congress at Niagara, July 29, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:308.

187 upon seeing the size of the army, offered to make peace. Bradstreet accepted these overtures and afterwards the Iroquois and Kahnawakes refused his requests to retaliate against the Shawnees and Delawares for their continued attacks against the British, insisting that those groups had offered peace and were therefore no longer Britain’s enemies. The disagreement led to the steady deterioration of their relationship over the course of the next month and a half as Bradstreet marched his army in a great loop from

Detroit and then to Sandusky, where he hoped to cement the peace agreement he had concluded with the residents of that town in August.17 The conflict finally boiled over in a council between the colonel and his Native allies on October 5, at which the Iroquois and Kahnawakes threatened to abandon the expedition outright. The Oneida leader

Thomas King informed Bradstreet that the “whole of the five Nations had taken the

Resolution of going home.”18 Bradstreet ultimately convinced his Indian allies to remain with his army, but they did so with obvious reluctance.19

As the colonel’s subordinate Captain John Montresor recorded in his journal of the campaign, however, relations between the two parties only worsened as it came to a close. Two days after the council on October 5, Montresor decried the Iroquois as the

“greatest Ennemies to his Brittanic Majesty in North America.”20 Three days after that he recorded that the fighters from Kahnawake had begun deserting.21 On October 11, he

17 For Bradstreet’s account of the campaign prior to his arrival at Sandusky, see “John Bradstreet to John Campbell, September 10, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, AAS; and “John Bradstreet to Thomas Gage, September 12, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, AAS. 18 “Indian Conference, October 5, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:373-374. 19 For Bradstreet’s account of his frustrations with his Native allies, see “John Bradstreet to Thomas Gage, October 5, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, AAS. 20 John D. Montresor, The Montresor Journals, ed. Gideon D. Scull (New York: New York Historical Society, 1882), 305. 21 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 306.

188 recounted that a party of Delawares that Bradstreet had intended to attack had been warned in advance by the Iroquois.22 The following day two of the Delawares’ Huron allies returned the favor by notifying Iroquois scouts in a raiding party that they group they intended to attack outnumbered them, after which the scouts forced their party to about face and return.23 That night, according to Montresor, the Iroquois met once more to debate abandoning the expedition entirely.24 On October 17, with the army running low on provisions during its return march to Fort Niagara, the Iroquois refused to carry a request by Bradstreet to Fort Pitt for more supplies, claiming “their people were all sick.”25 When a storm on Lake Erie the next day overturned a number of the expedition’s boats carrying what was left of its stores of food and ammunition, Montresor wrote, the

Indians had not offered the “least assistance.”26 Bradstreet retaliated by cutting off supplies to his Native allies, a restriction that remained in place until the return of the army to Fort Niagara on November 3.27

Upon their return, many of the Indians that accompanied Bradstreet detoured to

Johnson’s home before returning to their own so that they might obtain adequate supplies for the rest of their journey. Throughout the first half of December 1764, Johnson recorded his meetings with such individuals in terms of increasing frustration, outraged at the state of the Indians who visited him and their account of the expedition. For the first

22 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 306. 23 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 307. 24 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 307. 25 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 311. 26 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 312. 27 For Bradstreet’s justification of this conduct, see “John Bradstreet to Thomas Gage, November 4, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, AAS; and “John Bradstreet to Thomas Gage, November 20, 1764,” John Bradstreet papers, 1754-1782, Mss. Boxes B, Box 2, Folder 2, AAS. For his military record of the campaign, see “Orderly Book of Colonel John Bradstreet at Oswego, Ontario, Niagara, Erie, Detroit, and Albany, June 27 to November 29, 1764,” Orderly Books Collection, 1758-1833, Mss. Octavo Volume 2, AAS.

189 two weeks of the month, he wrote, the Kahnawakes “kept dropping in, naked, and almost famished.”28 After providing them with supplies, Johnson begged that they “not let that

Zeal slacken, which you have hitherto manifested for his Majesties Service.”29 In

Johnson’s eyes, the Kahnawakes were the key to a fruitful alliance with all of the Native communities in the St. Lawrence River Valley. Should they return home and spread news of their displeasure with the British it could, he believed, have profound implications for the future of Britain’s relations with the St. Lawrence Indians. This was evidently a fact of which the Kahnawakes were well aware. They responded to Johnson’s words by relating their version of events, complaining that Bradstreet (who they derisively referred to as “Skana,” the Iroquoian word for peace) had tied their hands by making peace, a beginning that “greatly displeased & Cooled our Young Men's Zeal.”30 “This is the first time we ever Joined our Bretheren the English,” they told Johnson, and “are sorry to say we never experienced such hardships, and treatment from the French.”31 The first military test of the relationship between the British and the St. Lawrence Indians had, in

Kahnawake eyes it seemed, been a singular disaster that more than anything else fueled their nostalgia for the French alliance.

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix

That relationship was further tested by the ongoing threat to the Kahnawakes’ lands as time progressed. Despite the military’s decision in their favor in 1762,

Quebecois habitants continued to encroach on the lands outside Kahnawake over the following decade. Britain’s inability to prevent this encroachment had, according to

28 “Indian Proceedings, December 2-16, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:501. 29 “Indian Proceedings, December 2-16, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:502. 30 “Indian Proceedings, December 2-16, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:505. 31 “Indian Proceedings, December 2-16, 1764,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:505.

190 Johnson in 1765, “occasioned the Indians to say that our words are not to be depended upon.”32 Hoping to resolve the many ongoing land disputes between Indians and colonists in the north once and for all, he invited the St. Lawrence Indians in February of

1765 to a “Meeting with many Nations, at which I hope to put an end to all Disputes between Indians, & us.”33 That meeting took place three years later and came to be known as the Treaty of Fort Stanwix.34

In most regards, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was (in Johnson’s eyes) largely a success. He convinced the Iroquois to cede their claim to lands adjacent to New York and

Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River as well as territory east of the Ohio River that ran south to the Tennessee country. In other respects, Johnson in particular was less enamored of what had taken place during the proceedings (especially because he believed it threatened his influence with the Iroquois). More specifically, the presence at the council of missionaries from Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock’s Indian school had caused him considerable exasperation. The minister’s envoys had, apparently, directly interfered with Johnson’s negotiation of the boundary line, working behind the scenes to have some of the lands in question set aside for an expanded version of

Wheelock’s school. The “late Conduct of the Missionaries who were endeavoring to obstruct the proceedings at the late Treaty” had, he wrote later to Reverend Samuel

Auchmuty (rector of Trinity Church), convinced him that the “National Church deserves

32 “William Johnson to Thomas Gage, March 9, 1765,” in Sullivan, ed., 11:625. 33 “Indian Conference, February 25-26, 1765,” in Sulllivan, ed., 11:608. 34 For an examination of the events leading up to and culminating with the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, see William J. Campbell, Speculators in Empire: Iroquoia and the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).

191 an imediate Indulgence.”35 Eleazar Wheelock had officially become a persona non grata to the northern Indian department.

Wheelock’s Missions to Quebec

The impact of Johnson’s enmity for Wheelock can be traced in the latter’s narratives of the Indian school’s progress over the following years, published biennially for the benefit of his financial supporters. In his narrative for 1771 Wheelock declaimed the “vigilance, plots, and devices of some potent enemies at a distance” who had convinced the Iroquois to withdraw their children from the school in February 1769, only a few short months after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix had been signed.36 By the time he published his 1773 narrative, the schoolmaster had learned that the Iroquois were

“determined to have no more” of his “schools or missions among them.”37 If he did not act fast, it seemed, Johnson’s opposition to his endeavors would bring them all to naught.

So, Wheelock began to look elsewhere for his pupils.

Because Wheelock had recently moved his school to New Hampshire (and named it Dartmouth College), the direction of his gaze perhaps naturally turned northward and he began sending missionaries to Quebec in search of potential students. The first of the missionaries sent by Wheelock was Silvanus Ripley, who traveled to Kahnawake in the fall of 1772. The timing of Ripley’s arrival was impeccable. He managed to poach two

Hurons from Wendake for Wheelock’s school who had just arrived to the Mohawk town on their way to Sir William Johnson in search of an education. One of those two Hurons,

35 “William Johnson to Samuel Auchmuty, December 21, 1768,” in Sullivan, ed., 6:542-43. 36 Eleazar Wheelock, A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity-School, in Lebanon, in Connecticut: from the Year 1768, to the Incorporation of It with Dartmouth-College, and Removal and Settlement of It in Hanover, in the Province of New-Hampshire, 1771 (Hartford, 1771), 14-15. 37 Eleazar Wheelock, David MClure, and Levi Frisbie, A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity-School: Begun in Lebanon, in Connecticut; Now Incorporated with Dartmouth-College, in Hanover, in the Province of New-Hampshire (Hartford, 1773), 8.

192 named Louis Vincent, hailed from one of the most influential families in Wendake and in many ways represented his kin’s greatest hopes for surviving the new world introduced by the British conquest of Quebec.38 After that conquest, Britain had allowed existing

Jesuit missionaries to remain in their parishes but banned any more from entering the province. In French Quebec, a Catholic education helped the Hurons of Wendake better navigate the byways of a colonial system. With the Jesuits by 1771 proving less and less able to provide that education, however, the Wendakes looked elsewhere. Louis Vincent therefore traveled at his family’s behest to find a Protestant education that might help them wend their way through the colonial system favored by the British. This choice did not necessarily mean embracing Protestant culture, but simply understanding how to survive in it without losing what it meant to be a resident of Wendake.

Similar choices were being made elsewhere in the St. Lawrence River Valley and for similar reasons. The words of Joseph-Louis Gill recorded by Wheelock’s missionary to Quebec two years later, Levi Frisbie, express the sentiment nicely. Gill, the son of captives taken by the Abenakis from New England, rose to prominence among his parent’s captors after the fall of Quebec to the British.39 His family background made him an appealing spokesman for the Abenakis as someone with inside knowledge of what it meant to live within the British Empire. While Gill could certainly be useful, however, his utility evidently came at a price. Daniel Claus’s records of his meetings with the

Abenakis mention Gill not only as an interpreter and spokesman but as the leader of a

38 See Jonathan Lainey and Thomas Peace, “Louis Vincent Sawatanen: A Life Forged by Warfare and Migration,” in Geoff Read, ed., Aboriginal History: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, Canada, 2016), 106-117. 39 Thomas-M. Charland, “Gill, Joseph-Louis, Magouaouidombaouit,” in Dictionary of St. Lawrence Biography, vol. 4, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 18, 2020, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gill_joseph_louis_4E.html.

193 party of young warriors within the community who were “overruling their Councils” and making it difficult for the “Chiefs To maintain their Authority.”40 Apparently, Gill was seizing the opportunity of the moment, using his position as a spokesman to pry an even more influential place in his community from the grasp of those above him. Gill no doubt believed that his family’s children to Wheelock’s school would give them further advantages within the political system of Odanak as well. “When they are instructed in both the Papist and Protestant Religions,” Frisbie recorded Gill as saying, they will be capable of choosing that which is best” for themselves and their community.41 As Gill well knew, knowledge of Protestantism (and British culture more generally) could give his family’s children a leg up in the world and Odanak more specifically. He wasn’t the sort to pass such an opportunity by and he certainly wasn’t the sort to dismiss the potential of that opportunity to help his family and his town navigate an ever-changing world.

Gill was by no means the only resident of a Native community to take a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to European religions. While indigenous converts to

Christianity embraced their new faith with sincerity, they also did so with thoughtfulness and curiosity. They questioned what they did not understand and adopted only those practices that made sense within their worldview, a perspective that remained thoroughly

Native despite their conversion. After all, that conversion was made in the ultimate hope

40 “Journal of Daniel Claus, June 12-July 27, 1773,” in Sullivan, ed., 13:620. 41 Eleazar Wheelock and Levi Frisbie, A Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity-School, Begun in Lebanon, in Connecticut, Now Incorporated with Dartmouth-College, in Hanover, in the Province of New-Hampshire. With a Dedication to the Honorable Trust in London. To Which Is Added an Account of Missions the Last Year, in an Abstract from the Journal of the Revd Mr. Frisbie, Missionary (Hartford: E. Watson, 1775), 53.

194 of facilitating their survival and success in a world invaded by colonial forces.42

According to Silvanus Ripley, the council of Kahnawake “to a man agreed” in 1771 to the proposal of “sending their children to this school” despite the “warm and zealous remonstrances of their priest.”43 Two years later, Levi Frisbie recorded this behavior in the account of his time in Kahnawake, where during a “long Conversation” an Indian asked a “Number of Questions, especially concerning the Prohibition of Marriage among the Romish Clergy, and seemed to be convinced that some of their Tenets were invented only to promote their own selfish Designs.”44 The St. Lawrence Indians that Wheelock’s missionaries encountered thus had an affinity for religious dissension that made them open to the ministrations of the Dartmouth schoolmaster.

His students’ dissenting attitudes did not make Wheelock overly sentimental, however. As the likelihood of hostilities between Britain and its colonies came closer to becoming a reality, Dartmouth’s founder sided firmly against the British (perhaps not much of a surprise given his antipathy to the staunchly Loyalist Johnson family). The possibility of violence did not seem to alarm him. “I have hitherto been secure and easy,” he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull, rebel governor of Connecticut, in March of 1775, as the

“most respectable tribes in Canada” have sent me students and I have instructed my

42 For the specific practice of Catholicism in Kahnawake, see David Blanchard, “...To the Other Side of the Sky: Catholicism at Kahnawake, 1667-1700,” Anthropologica 24, no. 1 (1982): pp. 77-102. For parallels in the experiences of indigenous converts to Protestantism in northeastern North America, see Linford D. Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For similar practices among the Iroquois, see David J. Silverman, Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). For the practice of Christianity among Native converts more generally, see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 43 Wheelock, MClure, and Frisbie, Continuation of the Narrative (1773), 39. 44 Wheelock and Frisbie, Continuation of the Narrative (1775), 46.

195 envoys “to bring more of those boys hither.”45 “I look upon this connection,” he told

Trumbull, “to be at present our surest bulwark against an invasion, if it should be attempted” for I consider my pupils “as hostages.”46 If the Native communities of Quebec did end up allying themselves to Britain, then, it seemed it would be their children who might suffer. It was a consideration those communities could not ignore and one that became of increasing importance after the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and its colonies in April of that year.

Choosing Allies

According to James Dean (Wheelock’s chief missionary in Quebec at the time), the Dartmouth schoolmaster had for the time being at least no cause to resort to such measures. The “Indians, by what I could then learn,” he in a deposition upon his return to

New England, are “pretty generally determined to take no part in the quarrel.”47 Like many Native communities in North America and the northern borderlands more specifically in the early months of the colonial rebellion, the Kahnawakes preferred to avoid choosing sides. Their mass mobilization on behalf of the French during the Seven

Years’ War and often tense relationship with the British afterwards had left them both demographically and politically exhausted. They had little cause to embroil themselves in a conflict that only promised to further that trend unless it was absolutely necessary.

As the Kahnawakes well knew, however, maintaining neutrality would require far more than words alone. First and foremost, it would necessitate reining in their young

45 “Eleazar Wheelock to Jonathan Trumbull, March 22, 1775,” in Peter Force, ed., American Archives . . ., 4th series (Washington: M. St. Clair Clarke, 1837-1853), 2:210. 46 “Eleazar Wheelock to Jonathan Trumbull, March 22, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:210. 47 “Narrative and Remarks by a Gentleman who left Montreal, July 6, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1594.

196 warriors (ever prone to complicating the diplomatic efforts of elder leaders). According to Dean’s account, when Guy Carleton requested that the Kahnawakes join the troops he was assembling in Montreal in case the rebels chose to invade the province, they had

“determined in Council, that if any of their young warriors should take up the hatchet” they would “banish them forever.”48 If Dean’s version of events is to be believed,

Kahnawake’s elders were willing to go to relatively extraordinary lengths to enforce their authority over the young warriors of the community. Leadership roles in Iroquoian societies like that of the Mohawk town typically lacked the coercive authority found in

European countries like Britain or France and generally depended more upon persuasion than force and, generally speaking, banishment was an extreme punishment of last resort.49 If the elders of Kahnawake did in fact threaten banishment upon their young warriors, it was therefore in the knowledge that they only had a limited power to do so and that their European audiences may not have been fully aware of that fact.

The Kahnawakes’ second priority, as nominal head of the Seven Nations

Confederacy, was to enforce a similar neutrality among the other indigenous communities of the St. Lawrence River Valley. According to a deposition by Garret

Roseboom of Albany, who had recently traveled to Montreal, the

“Caughnawagas particularly, are active in preventing the incursions of the other Indian nations.”50 For that purpose, Roseboom further related, the Kahnawakes had

“stationed about a dozen of their tribe at St˙ John's with horses, with directions that if

48 “Narrative and Remarks by a Gentleman who left Montreal, July 6, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1594-1595. 49 See William N. Fenton, “Leadership in the Northeastern Woodlands of North America,” American Indian Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1986): 21-45; “Banishment: An Overview,” in David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins, Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights (Seattle: University of Washington, 2017), 12-25. 50 “Examination of Garret Roseboom, July 15, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1670.

197 their endeavours should prove ineffectual, to give immediate notice to the tribe.”51 “In that case,” he concluded, the Kahnawakes “are resolved to prevent them by force.”52

Again, it was an extraordinary length for the Kahnawakes to go. Like leadership in

Native society on a local level, Native groups in alliances also generally lacked the coercive authority to force other groups into certain behaviors absent the use of political influence and diplomatic persuasion.53 Physically preventing the other St. Lawrence

Indians from choosing their own paths would represent a serious breach of protocol within their alliance system. It’s possible that, like their vow to banish young warriors that defied their decision, the elders of Kahnawake were yet again performing for a

European audience with a different understanding of authority.

Regardless, British officials (like the governor of Quebec Guy Carleton and provisional superintendent of northern Indian affairs Guy Johnson) had other ideas.54

What’s more, they were willing to use threat of force to achieve their ends if necessary.

According to Daniel Claus, at a meeting at Kahnawake in July representatives of those communities reminded the Carleton and Johnson that “at our taking of Canada in 1760, they were desired and treated with to consider the King's English subjects as their friends

& Brothers for the future, forgetting all former Hatred agst them.”55 This “they then

51 “Examination of Garret Roseboom, July 15, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1670. 52 “Examination of Garret Roseboom, July 15, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1670. 53 See “The Alliance,” in White, 142-85. 54 After assuming his uncle’s responsibilities the previous year, Guy Johnson had gone to work immediately to secure Native allies in the event of a colonial rebellion. See “Guy Johnson to the Earl of Dartmouth, December 14, 1774,” Correspondence, Original – Secretary of State (CO) 5/76/10-13, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA); and “Proceedings of a Council at Guy Park, December 1, 1774,” CO 5/76/14-25, TNA. 55“Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Ernest Cruikshank, ed., A History of the Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada: From the Peace of Paris in 1763, to the Present Time. With Illustrative Documents, 3 vols. (Ottawa: Canadian Government, 1919-1920), 2:124.

198 promised and hitherto fulfiled,” they continued, and breaking that promise was something

“they could not so easy determine upon.”56 Carleton responded with threats, promising them that “they must expect having their Lands taken from them & be deprived of other privileges they enjoyed.”57 The Indian delegates called his bluff, telling him “they considered themselves independent & free agents in that Respect and could say no more abt it & so the meeting broke up.”58 It was an inauspicious start to the war in Quebec, one that demonstrated the tenuous hold of British officials over the Native inhabitants of the province.

As Claus explained, it required his personal intervention to convince the St.

Lawrence Indians to accede to Carleton’s demands. In a private meeting with them after their council with Carleton and Johnson, he recounted, he reminded them of the colonists’ “ill usage of the Indians in general” and how they “got their Lands from them in a fraudulent Manner.”59 This practice of “striping them of all their Lands if not guarded against by the Crown,” he assured them, “would be the case with all Indians, should they become the Rulers of the Continent of America.”60 “They were so struck and roused” by that argument, Claus claimed, that “immediately they determined of attacking

& laying waste the New England frontiers.”61 After decades of defending their territory from colonial encroachment by the Quebecois, the St. Lawrence Indians had no desire to face similar efforts by English-speaking colonists as well. The British had, at the very least, aided in the protection of that territory on a few occasions like the case of

56 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:124. 57 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:124. 58 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:124. 59 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:124. 60 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:124. 61 “Memorandum of the Rebel Invasion of Canada, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:125.

199 Kahnawake in 1762. So, for the moment at least, the Native inhabitants of the St.

Lawrence River Valley agreed to support the empire.

While the St. Lawrence Indians affected a certain eagerness in their meeting with

Claus, however, they represented their decision to support the British in a very different light to rebel audiences. James Dean heard of the meeting between Carleton and the St.

Lawrence Indians secondhand from the Kahnawakes and, according to him, the governor’s threat to “dispossess them” and “give their lands to those who would” fight alongside the British had painted the Native delegates into a corner.62 As Dean reported it, the Native communities of the province “found themselves reduced to the disagreeable necessity either of relinquishing every thing they held dear in life, or complying in some measure with the Governour' s demands.”63 The Kahnawakes appeared not to have informed Dean of the private meeting with Claus. Instead, they preferred for the rebel- leaning missionary to believe they had been pressured into their decision to support

Carleton’s defense of the province. In doing so, they sought to play the British and rebels off one another just as so many other Native communities had with Britain and France during the imperial struggles that preceded the conquest of Quebec fifteen years earlier.

This was not the only evidence of the St. Lawrence Indians’ delicate balancing act in the summer of 1775. Indeed, at almost the exact moment that the leaders of those communities were meeting with Johnson and Carleton, their representatives were traveling to meet with rebel authorities to assure them of their friendly intentions.

Delegations from Odanak and Kahnawake both visited the rebel legislature of

62 “Narrative and Remarks by a Gentleman who left Montreal, July 6, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1595. 63 “Narrative and Remarks by a Gentleman who left Montreal, July 6, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 2:1595.

200 Massachusetts during the month of August and assured their audience that the St.

Lawrence Indians were well-disposed to the cause of ‘liberty.’ The delegate from

Odanak, none other than Joseph-Louis Gill, declared in his meeting with the legislature that Carleton had “threatened us” but “we are not afraid of it” and “are now in general ready to take [the hatchet] up again in your behalf.”64 In light of Dean’s report regarding the St. Lawrence Indians’ response to Carleton’s pressure, Gill was making a relatively bold claim. It’s likely then that he was operating well beyond the parameters of whatever guidelines he may have received from the leaders of Odanak prior to setting out on his journey to New England. Taking that into consideration, it’s possible that Gill was once again seizing his moment. While the elders of his community sought neutrality but acquiesced to British demands under threat, their frequent bugaboo and sometime spokesman saw an alliance with the rebels as a potential opportunity to leverage more influence for himself and his supporters in Odanak’s political world. So, he promised his audience in Massachusetts more than he was authorized to offer in the hopes that his ambition might be rewarded should the province of Quebec fall to rebel forces.

Gill’s counterpart from Kahnawake, Louis Cook, pursued a similar course.

According to Eleazar Williams, the son of one of his contemporaries, Cook was born to a black father and Abenaki woman from Odanak in Saratoga, New York, captured as a child during a 1745 raid, and transported to Kahnawake where he was educated by the

Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Tournois.65 Cook rose to prominence in that town leading

64 “Report of the Committee appointed to confer with the Chief of the St. François Tribe, August 17, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:339. 65 The entirety of our knowledge of Cook’s young life is courtesy of his early biographer Eleazar Williams, who also claimed to be the Lost Dauphin of France. Williams’ account of Cook’s life was acquired by the nineteenth-century historian Franklin B. Hough during his time in Akwesasne and later transcribed by Cook’s more recent biographer Darren Bonaparte. See Eleazar Williams, “Eleazer William's Biography of

201 men during the Seven Years’ War, but after the conquest of Quebec returned to

Kahnawake, “resumed the chase [hunt],” and resolved to spend his life in peace.66 The outbreak of war between Britain and its colonies apparently changed things, however.

When Cook met with the rebel legislature of Massachusetts in August of 1775, he, just as

Gill had, exaggerated the Kahnawakes’ response to Carleton’s threats, claiming they had told the governor they would “take Arms and defend ourselves.”67 He even went so far as to assert that Kahnawake’s elders had not threatened any young warriors who heeded

Britain’s call with banishment as Dean recorded but that “they would put them to death,” a punishment well beyond the bounds of any Native leader’s authority let alone that of those who led the town on the St. Lawrence.68 In doing so, he was likely speaking in terms he believed a European audience would appreciate, knowing full well that his listeners would not truly understand the meaning of his words within the context of local

Native politics.

Regardless, there was yet more to come from Louis Cook. In a meeting with the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the recently formed Continental Army, General

George Washington, in his camp at the siege of Boston, Cook promised much more than neutrality and home defense on behalf of his community. According to Washington,

Cook had declared in their meeting that not only were the Kahnawakes “totally averse” to attacking the rebels, but “if any Expedition is meditated against Canada the Indians in

Colonel Louis Cook,” ed. Franklin B. Hough and Darren Bonaparte, The Wampum Chronicles, accessed March 14, 2020, http://www.wampumchronicles.com/colonellouis.html). 66 Hough and Bonaparte, ed. 67 “Report of this Committee, of their conference with Lewis, August 3, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:302. 68 “Report of this Committee, of their conference with Lewis, August 3, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:302.

202 that Quarter will give all their Assistance” to them.69 So, like Gill, Cook apparently favored an alliance with the rebels against the British and was willing to exaggerate the strength and determination of his community to advance his position. Unlike his counterpart from Odanak, however, the delegate from Kahnawake seemed to have slightly different motivations for doing so.

Those motivations are revealed in Williams’s biography of Cook. According to him, Cook was “so much attached to his old military friends, the french” that “he was never reconciled under the English Government.”70 As a result, after Quebec’s fall he would often “sigh, when speaking of the English conquest of Canada” and “his war spirit entirely ceased.”71 When the first rumblings of the colonial rebellion began, however, “he watched with intense interest at the movements of the American Colonies” and looked forward eagerly to the “expected rupture between England & her American subjects.”72

Evidently, like many of the war’s participants Native and otherwise, Cook believed the rebellion might provide an opening for France’s return to North America. For at least one resident of Kahnawake, then, an alliance to the rebels seemed rooted in memories of the

French alliance. Cook had fought alongside the French in the Seven Years’ War and with their withdrawal from the continent sworn to live in peace. Seeing the colonial rebellion as a means to affect their much-rumored return, he took up the hatchet once more and

69 “George Washington to John Hancock, August 4-5, 1775,” in in The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel et al. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2007-). 70 Hough and Bonaparte, ed. 71 Hough and Bonaparte, ed. 72 Hough and Bonaparte, ed.

203 fought in the hopes of recreating the world in which he had lived prior to the withdrawal of France from North America so that he might sigh no more.73

The Invasion Collapses

While some St. Lawrence Indians like Gill and Cook expressed enthusiasm for the colonial rebellion in the first year of the war, however, the large majority ultimately gave in to the pressure being applied by Britain’s representatives in Quebec.74 That trend continued in the war’s second year, when the rebel invasion of Quebec stalled and finally collapsed. Rebel leaders did their best to stem the tide, among them Eleazar Wheelock.

Shortly after the defeat of the Continental Army in the Battle of Quebec on December 31, the Dartmouth schoolmaster sent Louis Vincent back to the northern province in the hopes of convincing the Hurons of Wendake to support the rebels despite their setback on

New Year’s Eve. Vincent had quickly become one of Wheelock’s star pupils, who described him two years into his education as a “young m[a]n of a generous Manly spirit” who “appeared to have a great thirst for Knowledge.”75 Upon meeting him in 1776 the rebel commander in Montreal General was similarly impressed, writing to

Philip Schuyler that he “understands English, French, and Indian” and would use his skills to “find out the truth” about the Wendakes’ disposition towards the rebels.76 As it turned out, that disposition was less than favorable.

73 Cook was by no means the only Native leader with hopes that the French might return to North America. See Gregory Evans Dowd, “The French King Wakes up in Detroit: ‘Pontiacs War’ in Rumor and History,” Ethnohistory 37, no. 3 (1990): 254-78. 74 For a British account of this process see Guy Johnson’s memorial to George Germain upon his arrival to London in January of 1776, which includes his records of Indian transactions for 1775 (CO 5/77/1-11, TNA). 75 “Recommendation of Basteen and Lewis Vincent, February 27, 1773,” in Eleazar Wheelock, The Letters of Eleazar Wheelock’s Indians, James Dow McCallum, ed. (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Publications, 1932), 246. 76 “David Wooster to Philip Schuyler, March 5, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 5:417.

204 Indeed, of all the Native communities in the St. Lawrence River Valley, the

Wendakes seemed the firmest in their attachment to the British alliance. Again, just as it had during Pontiac’s War, their size and location played a major role. With their fighting force as small as it was and their town close enough to the city of Quebec for British officials to exert their limited influence over it even with the Continental Army at their gate, there was little chance of the Wendakes openly embracing an alliance with the rebels. It was with these factors in mind that the leaders of Wendake had promised Guy

Johnson in October of 1775 that they “would do all in their power for his interest” and

“send [his messages] to the Different Nations” of Huronia.77 Just as Sir William had the previous decade, Guy Johnson was clearly endeavoring to use whatever influence he perceived the Wendakes to have over Huronia to gain support for Britain in the Great

Lakes and Ohio River Valley. Once more that influence proved illusory, but this time to the empire’s benefit. In the aftermath of Pontiac’s War, the Hurons of the Great Lakes and Ohio countries had discovered British officials to be their main bulwark against the illegal encroachments of unruly colonists and so for the most part chose to support those officials when the rebellion broke out in 1775. So when Wendakes like Louis Vincent began agitating for the rebels the Hurons of Detroit had, as they reminded their northern brethren in a later meeting, “unit[ed] all our Brethren the western and other nations” and

“Set you Right by insisting that you should be True to your Father the King.”78 It was not the Wendakes who ensured support for Britain in the Great Lakes, then, but vice versa.

77 “Meeting with a Deputation of Hurons from Lorette, October 30, 1775,” in Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District of North America fonds, Series 2, reproduction copy number H-2944, Lot 611, 5, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (LAC). 78 “Meeting with the Principal Chiefs of the Hurons, Ottawas, Chippewas, and Potawatomies, August 15, 1790,” Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District of North America fonds, Series 2, reproduction copy number H-2944, Lot 686, 10-11, LAC.

205 The Hurons of Detroit had exerted their influence over those of Quebec and, as a result,

Louis Vincent’s mission to Wendake was a failure.

Of course, by the time Vincent returned to his home in the spring of 1776 there were few among the Native inhabitants of Quebec who still contemplated stronger ties to the rebels. The rebel occupation of the northern province after the fall of Montreal in

November of 1775 had quickly started to wear thin for the region’s indigenous inhabitants. The ill-supplied and undermanned Continental Army could neither provide the material gifts considered necessary for maintaining alliances with Native communities or protect those communities from the wrath of Guy Carleton and his soldiers. The arrival of reinforcements for Carleton and subsequent breaking of the siege of the city of Quebec at the beginning of May made the possibility of a formal alliance between the rebels and St. Lawrence Indians increasingly unlikely. The events surrounding the Battle of the Cedars from May 18 to 27 seemed to shut the door on that possibility for good.

After the Continental Army outpost at Les Cèdres south of Montreal was captured by British and Native forces under Captain George Forster, rebel leaders resoundingly condemned their enemy’s use of indigenous allies as a violation of the ‘civilized’ rules of warfare.79 What they refused to acknowledge, on the other hand, was that the Indians involved in the battle might have had some motivation for their actions. After setting off from Oswegatchie on May 12 with forty regulars, ten militiamen, and 160 Iroquois warriors, Forster’s party had passed through Odanak two days later and persuaded fifty-

79 For the rebel and British responses to the battle, see An Authentic Narrative of Facts Relating to the Exchange of Prisoners Taken at the Cedars: Supported by the Testimonies and Depositions of His Majestys Officers, with Several Original Letters and Papers: Together with Remarks upon the Report and Resolves of the American Congress on That Subject (London: T. Cadell, 1777).

206 four of that town’s inhabitants to join them. Joseph-Louis Gill’s rebel leanings notwithstanding, it may not have taken much convincing on Forster’s part. After all, decades of war would have left many Abenakis with little sympathy for their rebellious neighbors to the south (who they referred to collectively as ‘Bostonians’).

The memoirs of Quebecois translator for the Indian Department Claude-Nicolas

Guillaume de Lorimier reveal a more specific motive for the Odanak Indians’ involvement in the expedition against Les Cèdres, however.80 According to him, fighters from that community seemed particularly concerned with the fate of their community’s translator Joseph-Hippolyte Hertel de Saint-François. Hertel, who had guided the Odanak

Abenakis through the duration of their stay in Akwesasne over the 1760s, had been captured by the rebels during the siege of Fort St. Johns in 1775 and sent into exile in the lower thirteen colonies.81

So, as Lorimier documents in his memoir, the fighters from that town who aided in the capture of Les Cèdres sought to use their participation in the battle as an opportunity to affect their translator’s return. Whereas Native fighters typically took prisoners of war home with them to be adopted into their communities, the Odanaks at

Les Cédres offered a rebel prisoner to Lorimier on multiple occasions as long as, in the translator’s words, “I would promise he would be exchanged for Captain Hertel.”82 “I promised, and it was done,” Lorimier later recalled, and “as soon as our prisoners reached the Colonies the Americans sent back Captain Hertel.”83 The Odanak Indians at the Battle

80 Claude-Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier, At War with the Americans: The Journal of Claude-Nicolas- Guillaume De Lorimier, ed. Peter Aichinger and Roch Tanguay (Victoria, B.C.: Press Porcepic, 1981). 81 See Thomas-M. Charland, “Hertel de Saint-François, Joseph-Hippolyte,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 28, 2020, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hertel_de_saint_francois_joseph_hippolyte_4E.ht. 82 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 55. 83 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 55.

207 of the Cedars thus allied supported the British in the spring of 1776 and skillfully played upon European practices regarding prisoners of war in order to achieve their own ends.

Hertel had proven himself a useful ally of Odanak, so the fighters of that town had seized their opportunity and brought him back into the fold. In the process, they were pulled more firmly into the orbit of a British alliance.

The Battle of the Cedars likewise pushed the Kahnawakes into an alliance with the British, but for different reasons. Shortly before the fall of Montreal in 1775, General

Richard Montgomery had provided the town with a one-hundred-man guard from his army to protect it against Carleton’s threats.84 When the rebels began retreating from

Quebec the following spring, however, the Continental Army withdrew its protective detail. The town’s residents were thus on their own when Forster and his indigenous allies captured Les Cèdres just to their south and proceeded to advance on Kahnawake shortly thereafter. In his letter informing Schuyler of the Battle of the Cedars, General

John Sullivan (the most recent commander of rebel forces in Quebec) wrote that after

Forster’s party killed sixty of their fighters the Kahnawakes “sent an express to our Army demanding assistance, and threatening if they had not immediate relief, to join the enemy.”85 Preoccupied as they were in that moment with fleeing headlong from the province, relief was less than forthcoming from the Continental Army. So, with a new political and military reality on the horizon, the Kahnawakes weighed their options once more.

It was in that moment that the Kahnawakes were approached by the governor’s nephew, Christopher Carleton, who had recently returned to the province with the

84 See “Richard Montgomery to Philip Schuyler, October 10, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 3:1132. 85 “John Sullivan to Philip Schuyler, May 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:610.

208 reinforcements that precipitated the retreat of the rebels. The younger Carleton had made himself a nuisance to the Kahnawakes off and on throughout the 1760s and there was little love lost between them. When he asked them in late June to provide warriors for a raid against the retreating rebels, however, they recognized the opportunity for what it was despite any misgivings they might have felt regarding its source. The Continental

Army under General Sullivan had by that point withdrawn as far south as the outpost at

Île aux Noix on the Richilieu River. It was there that the younger Carleton and his

Kahnawake auxiliaries struck, capturing almost twenty rebel soldiers while they rested along the river unarmed. The attack was, according to Sullivan, a precipitating factor in the eventual decision to leave the province of Quebec entirely. “I think it would be by far the best to remove to Crown Point,” Sullivan wrote to George Washington shortly afterwards, “as the savages have already begun upon us.”86 Without the assistance of the

Continental Army, the St. Lawrence Indians had chosen to do what they could to protect their lands and lives from the heavy-handed representatives of the British Empire in

Quebec. In the process, they had helped to drive the rebels from the province once and for all.

The Native communities of the St. Lawrence River Valley similarly wound up playing a key role in the final confrontation of the campaign, the in October of 1776. Generally speaking, that confrontation is remembered as one of the first naval battles of the war and of the fledgling United States Navy.87 Within that

86 “John Sullivan to George Washington, June 24, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:1219. 87 See, for instance, Matthew Seelinger, “Buying Time: The Battle of Valcour Island,” On Point 3, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 3-6.

209 context, European combatants are given primacy of place in historical treatments.88 As

Claude-Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier’s memoir reveals, however, indigenous fighters

(and particularly the St. Lawrence Indians) were heavily involved in the battle. Indeed, according to Lorimier, he and his Native allies spent much of the battle firing on Benedict

Arnold himself from their birch bark canoes, making it “so hot for him that all his men flung themselves on the bottom of the boat and left him all alone on the deck.”89 This made the rebel general “so enraged,” Lorimier recalled, that he “flung overboard three of his own men” and then “hailed another vessel to fire on these damned savages.”90

Though carried out, his orders proved ineffectual in removing the indigenous threat.

Ultimately, it was that threat in particular that prevented him from making landfall nearby to escape the enemy’s more powerful ships and Arnold was forced to sneak away toward the refuge at Crown Point in the middle of the night. When he finally did land, he barely escaped a Native ambush.91 Providence alone, Arnold wrote to Philip Schuyler a few days later, had saved him and his men “from our more than savage enemies.”92 Later accounts of the combat at Valcour Island might not give Native fighters primacy of place in the battle, but Benedict Arnold certainly did.

The Native fighters that accompanied Guy Carleton’s forces onto Lake

Champlain played an equally decisive role in the campaign’s eventual termination. After the battle, Carleton had captured the fort at Crown Point but chosen not to continue on to take Fort Ticonderoga. According to General William Phillips, who accompanied

88 See, for example, Justin Clement and Douglas R. Cubbison, “'The Artillery Never Gained More Honour': The British and Hesse-Hanau Artillery Gunboats at the Battle of Valcour Island,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 85, no. 343 (Autumn 2007): 247-55. 89 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 61. 90 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 61. 91 “Benedict Arnold to Philip Schuyler, October 17, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 2:1079-80. 92 “Benedict Arnold to Philip Schuyler, October 15, 1776,” in Force, ed., 5th Series, 3:254.

210 Carleton during the campaign, Carleton’s decision to do so came as a result of indigenous actions. “I stand alone unable to bear up against the sloth and changes of this atmosphere,” he complained to John Burgoyne in a letter on October 23 from Crown

Point, where the “whim of a drunken Indian prevails.”93 “I have endeavored in vain to form a small detachment to feel the pulse of the enemy,” he continued, but the “answer is that it is wrong to teach these rebels war.”94 “I must be of opinion,” he concluded with chagrin, that “notwithstanding the success upon the lake, we terminate the campaign ill.”95 It was likely no accident that the St. Lawrence Indians’ chosen moment coincided with the beginning of the hunting season, but it also no doubt had much to do with the privations they had suffered over the course of the rebel occupation of Quebec. After almost a year of conflict so close to their own homes, the Native inhabitants of the St.

Lawrence River Valley were surely searching for an opportunity to recuperate and augment dwindling supplies of both food and wealth with a trip into the hinterlands for meat and furs. With their indigenous allies unwilling to proceed beyond Crown Point, the

British had little hope of continuing their campaign.

While the Valcour Island campaign reveals much about the influence of Native motivations on European military decision-making, however, it also offers insight into the effect of the invasion of Quebec on intra-Native politics in the province. According to

Claude-Nicolas Guillame de Lorimier, he “had a good deal of difficulty” during the campaign “preserving the Caughnawagas from the insults of the other nations, because

93 “William Phillips to John Burgoyne, October 23, 1776,” in John Burgoyne, Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign: His Papers, ed. Douglas Cubbison (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 155. 94 “William Phillips to John Burgoyne, October 23, 1776,” in Cubbison, ed., 155. 95 “William Phillips to John Burgoyne, October 23, 1776,” in Cubbison, ed., 155.

211 they had decided to consider [them] as enemies of the King.”96 Whatever authority the

Kahnwakes may have claimed over the other Native communities in the St. Lawrence

River Valley as a result of Sir William Johnson’s dreams of a Seven Nations

Confederacy, it seemed, it was in short supply as a result of the overtures they had made to the rebels over the course of their northern invasion. As the war proceeded that rift continued to widen, complementing a similar divide among the confederated Iroquois to the south. Ultimately, the result would be a remaking of Native diplomacy and politics across the northern borderlands as individual communities and their inhabitants sought the best way forward in the conflict.

New Confederacies

The Kahnawakes, at least, had a plan. What might at first glance seem more surprising, however, was that that plan involved reaching out to members of the Iroquois

Confederacy. After all, for over a decade the Kahnawakes had been resisting a more formal relationship with the confederacy, doing their best to fend off the efforts of the

Iroquois to bring them under the umbrella of the Great Law of Peace. Such efforts were still being made on the eve of the war itself, with the Kahnawakes refusing to cooperate as politely as possible. Daniel Claus recorded one such encounter in his journal for 1773, wherein representatives from the Iroqouis announced to the Kahnawakes that the “6 Nats. had come to a Resolution to unite all those Nations that heretofore belongd to the

Confederacy.”97 It was an endeavor of which Sir William Johnson surely approved, one that served his interests by seeking to bring the Kahnawakes more firmly into his orbit and that of the Iroquois by working to expand the confederacy’s geopolitical authority.

96 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 60. 97 “Journal of Daniel Claus, 1773,” in Sullivan, ed., 13:618.

212 Unfortunately for those ambitions the Kahnwakes demurred for neither the first nor the last time, responding that they “were only puzzled” and “not remembring when they proposed to unite wth. them again” could only answer by “thanking the 6 Nat'. for the

Compliment.”98 Thus, the Kahnawakes maintained a delicate balance between benefiting from the authority the British Indian Department gave them as nominal head of the Seven

Nations Confederacy and maintaining their independence without unduly insulting the powerful Iroquois to their south.

Yet, after nearly a year of war in Quebec the Kahnawakes seemingly reversed course, sending a delegation to the Iroquois council at Onondaga with the apparent intention of uniting with the confederacy. The manner in which they did so, however, made the exact nature of that intention clear for all to see. According to a message sent by the Oneidas to Philip Schuyler via James Dean in March of 1776, the Kahnawakes had

“entered our doors” and declared that they chose to come first to us, because we were of one heart and one mind with themselves.”99 It was not really the entire Iroquois

Confederacy with which the Kahnawakes wished to establish more formal ties, then, but those members who (like themselves) seemed to be leaning more in the direction of an alliance with the rebels. Still, with the confederacy remaining for the moment nominally intact despite the growing divide between those who favored the rebels like the Oneidas and those who preferred the British like the Mohawks, it would not do to ignore the central council at Onondaga entirely. So, the Kahnawakes attended the council but in the process of doing so announced their clear preference for the Oneidas.

98 “Journal of Daniel Claus, 1773,” in Sullivan, ed., 13:619. 99 “James Dean to Philip Schuyler, March 18, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 5:769.

213 By June, Schuyler had received intelligence that the “Oneidas, Tuscaroras,

Ochgugues, and the Caughnawagas of Canada, have entered into a defensive league to support each other against the other nations.”100 For the time being, however, it seemed that that league was evidently to remain a secret. When Schuyler reported the news to

Congressional leaders, he informed them that it was “communicated in confidence” and the Presbyterian minister “did not choose to commit it to paper, and entreats that no mention may be made of it, lest the confederacy should be attacked by the others.”101

While the Iroquois council at Onondaga remained active, then, it was apparent that those of the confederacy who were coming closer to an alliance with the rebels were making moves behind the scenes to establish a parallel structure capable of replacing it when the time came for that alliance to be made public. What’s more that structure was being established with the cooperation of the much coveted Kahnawakes, who at long last were joining with their neighbors to the south in a way that effectively demolished Sir William

Johnson’s vision of what the St. Lawrence Indians could or would be within the Indian

Department.

While it became clear that the Kahnawakes were abandoning Sir William’s vision for the St. Lawrence Indians in the summer of 1776, it was evident that the British were doing likewise somewhat sooner. According to a report by the Oneidas to Philip Schuyler in May of 1776, the British Indian agent Colonel had effectively put an end to Sir William’s plans for the Kahnawakes in a treaty council with the Iroquois at Fort

Niagara. As the Oneidas reported it, delegates from the confederacy had informed Butler at that council that the “Six Nations with the Cagnawagas and the Seven Tribes in the

100 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, June 8, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:763. 101 “Philip Schuyler to the President of Congress, June 8, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:763.

214 vicinity had all united and resolved to maintain peace, both with the King and the

Bostonians.”102 In response, they recounted, Butler answered that their “resolutions are very surprising” since the “Cognawagas claiming Seven Tribes as under their jurisdiction” was “false; they tell a lie.”103 The “Cognawagas are by themselves alone and they are become Bostonians,” he declared, and the “other Six Tribes in that vicinity with all the back nations are at the King's command and will take his side.”104 Butler’s words signaled a reversal of the British Indian Department’s policy towards the Native communities of the St. Lawrence River Valley during its time under Sir William Johnson.

In Butler’s eyes, the Kahnawakes’ perceived rebel leadings precluded them from a leadership role among the Seven Nations of Quebec. They would have to make do with their new and still secret confederacy with the Oneidas.

The Saratoga Campaign

The next campaign in the northern borderlands, an invasion from Quebec into the

Hudson River Valley under General John Burgoyne in the summer of 1777, ensured that that confederacy would not remain a secret for much longer. Native groups across

Iroquoia and Quebec were actively involved in that campaign on either side.105 This fact posed certain conceptual problems for European military leaders who considered

102 “Extract: The Oneida Chiefs to Major General Philip Schuyler, May 22, 1776,” in William A. Smy, ed., The Butler Papers: Documents and Papers Relating to Colonel John Butler and His Corps of Rangers, 1711-1977, 4 vols. (St. Catherines, ON: Brock University, 1994), 1:139. 103 “Extract: The Oneida Chiefs to Major General Philip Schuyler, May 22, 1776,” in Smy, ed., 1:139. 104 “Extract: The Oneida Chiefs to Major General Philip Schuyler, May 22, 1776,” in Smy, ed., 1:139. 105 Securing the involvement of Native fighters was of paramount concern to British officials in particular and Guy Johnson’s first action upon his return to North America from London in 1776 was to begin recruiting indigenous allies not only for Burgoyne’s invasion from the north but for General William Howe’s intended march from to the Valley. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, November 25, 1776,” CO 5/77/204-205, TNA.

215 indigenous warfare less ‘civilized.’106 Burgoyne himself seems to have done his utmost to enforce European conceptions of warfare and alliance on the Indians that marched with him down the Lake Champlain corridor. He did so by holding a council with his Native allies on July 21 at a camp along the Bouquet River, declaring that he was determined to

“positively forbid bloodshed when you are not opposed in Arms.”107 Shortly after his meeting on July, his Native allies faced accusations of murdering a young woman named

Jane McCrea, the twenty-five-year-old fiancé of Loyalist militiaman David Jones, who was presumably killed by a Huron warrior on her way to Fort Ticonderoga on July 27.

Jane McCrea’s death soon became a wellspring of rebel propaganda that drove the participation of local militias in the ensuing campaign to new heights.108 For the invading

British force, however, it heightened the tensions in the general’s relationship with the

Indians that marched south with him from Quebec.

Those tensions came to a head in early August as the expedition trekked through what later became the state of Vermont and, as a result, Burgoyne’s indigenous allies chose to abandon the invasion force almost entirely. According to Burgoyne himself, the

Indians that accompanied his expedition from Quebec departed his force en masse the

106 For an overview of European conceptions of Native warfare, see Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). Not all British officials were chary of Native military tactics, however. Guy Johnson, for example, specifically suggested that the fear of Britain’s Indian allies and their method of warfare could be a primary tool in securing the success of the campaign under Burgoyne. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, February 15, 1777,” CO 5/78/70-71, TNA. 107 “Substance of the Speech of Lieut. Genl. Burgoyne to the Indians in Congress at the Camp upon the River Bouquet, June 21, 1777, and of Their Answer,” in Cubbison, ed., 200. 108 See Jeremy Engels and Greg Goodale, “'Our Battle Cry Will Be: Remember Jenny McCrea!': A Précis on the Rhetoric of Revenge,” American Quarterly 61, no. 1 (March 2009): 93-112. Burgoyne also received criticism in Britain for his conduct of the campaign. See Remarks on General Burgoynes State of the Expedition from Canada (London: printed for G. Wilkie, 1780). He did have his defenders, however. Among them was Guy Johnson, who considered the use of Native allies in the campaign successful in many ways despite its eventual outcome. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, February 11, 1779,” CO 5/80/63-64, TNA.

216 day after a council with him on August 4 in which they expressed their frustrations with his restriction of their activities following the murder of Jane McCrea.109 The Quebecois interpreter Luc de la Corne (commonly known as Saint-Luc) offered a substantially different explanation.110 As Saint-Luc told it, Burgoyne had driven his Native allies to abandon the campaign not after his actions in the wake of Jane McCrea’s murder but by his “indifference towards the Indians” who “had served in the affair at Bennington” over two weeks later on August 16.111 “Many of [the Indians], with their grand chief, were killed” in that engagement, Saint-Luc recounted, and it “gave no high idea of the care which [Burgoyne] should have taken of the men destined to fight under [his] command.”112 As someone with a closer relationship to Burgoyne’s Indian allies told it, then, their departure from the campaign resulted not from their violation of European military conventions but from the general’s transgression of Native diplomatic expectations. In doing so, he had lost all claim to the support and loyalty of his Native allies. So, they returned home.

Saint-Luc’s version of events is further bolstered by Claude-Nicolas Guillaume de

Lorimier’s recollection of events, which identifies the British defeat at the Battle of

Bennington as the terminus of indigenous contributions to the campaign. According to

109 John Burgoyne, A State of the Expedition from Canada: as Laid before the House of Commons (London: Printed for J. Almon, 1780), 99-100. 110 For his own part, Burgoyne claimed that interpreters like Saint-Luc encouraged his Native allies in their behavior during the expedition and generally complained of the relative quality of the interpreters assigned to his command. See Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 99-100. It was in response to these complaints that Saint-Luc published his account of the campaign, claiming a spotless record of service as an interpreter for both the French and British crowns. Burgoyne wasn’t the only one with such complaints, however. Daniel Claus recorded similar doubts about the quality of interpreters in his report to the British ministry on northern Indian affairs in March of 1777. See “Remarks on the Management of the Northern Indian Nations,” CO 5/78/12-15, TNA. 111 Luc de la Corne, “A Letter from the Chev. St Luc De La Corne, Colonel of the Indians, to Gen. Burgoyne,” The Scots Magazine (1778), 715. 112 Luc de la Corne, Scots Magazine, 715.

217 him, the Indians present at Bennington suggested the night before the battle that they “fall back upon the reinforcements” soon to arrive under the Hessian commander Lieutenant

Colonel Heinrich von Breymann.113 The Hessian commander present with them,

Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, in turn, replied that while the “Indians’ idea was sound” his orders from Burgoyne “were so strict that he could not withdraw.”114 Lorimier chose not to relay Baum’s reply to the Indians for fear it would so disgust them they might abandon the Burgoyne entirely. His silence meant the Indians were still with Baum the next morning when the rebels attacked, during which they were eventually cut off from the main body of Baum’s troops and forced back towards Breymann’s oncoming reinforcements. When Breymann’s forces were subsequently ambushed and defeated, the

Native fighters retreated. Lorimier, who survived but received a wound that necessitated his return to Quebec, discovered that retreat had taken the St. Lawrence Indians all the way back home. When the translator went to Kahnawake in the hopes of convincing them to return to Burgoyne’s army, the Kahnawakes agreed but only “on the condition that I go along with them.”115 Burgoyne had, it seemed, proven himself an inadequate leader in their eyes and so they had refused to remain with his campaign without the presence of

Lorimier as a mediator between them. If they were to return, they made clear, it would only be with such a mediator at their side.

Civil War

Ultimately, the Kahnawakes’ return to Burgoyne proved a moot point. Just a short time later the general’s march south ground to a halt in the face of rebel opposition under

113 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 64. 114 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 64. 115 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 67.

218 Horatio Gates. In the two battles that followed at Freeman’s Farm on September 19 and

Bemis Heights on October 7, the Native warriors that fought alongside the British army hailed primarily from the Mohawks. According to at least one source, however, there were also some Hurons from Wendake that remained with Burgoyne until the bitter end.

That source, a Wendake warrior named Petit-Etienne (Ondiaraété), recalled in a newspaper interview in 1828 that “about half an hour before the surrender” of John

Burgoyne on October 17 “we succeeded in effecting our retreat” and “proceeded from thence to our Village at Lorette.”116 It was no doubt an embittering experience for a community that had been pressured into supporting Britain to watch their ally by coercion suffer such a massive defeat. Even more embittering perhaps, was the fact that other St. Lawrence Indians could be counted among the victors. Among those the

Wendakes faced at the Battles of Saratoga were Louis Cook and the Oneidas, who formally embraced an alliance with the rebels after a meeting with Philip Schuyler on

September 14.117 The confrontation brought them one step closer to a civil war in the northern borderlands, a conflict in which the St. Lawrence Indians played an active role.

For those from Kahnawake who favored the rebels like Louis Cook, Burgoyne’s eventual defeat and surrender at Saratoga leant a heightened intensity to their activities by prompting France’s long-awaited entry into the war as an ally of the new United

116 “Indian Lorette,” The Star and Commercial Advertiser/L'Etoile et Journal du Commerce, February 13, 1828. 117 “Philip Schuyler to Congress, September 27, 1777,” in Philip Schuyler. Proceedings of a General Court Martial, Held at Major General Lincoln's Quarters, near Quaker-Hill, in the State of New-York, by Order of His Excellency General Washington, Commander in Chief of the Army of the United States of America, for the Trial of Major General Schuyler, October 1, 1778, Major General Lincoln, President (Philadelphia: Hall and Sellers, 1778), 57.

219 States.118 The rebel-leaning Kahnawakes’ enthusiasm for such a possibility is revealed in a meeting Cook had with a French officer by the name of Peter Stephen du Ponceau who served as the Baron von Steuben’s translator the spring after Burgoyne’s surrender.

According to Ponceau he came upon Louis Cook early one morning in the woods near camp, who greeted him by exclaiming “Ah! My father, you are French; I am very happy to see you.”119 He then went on to ask Ponceau a “number of questions about the King, the Queen, the royal family and whether they did not mean to reconquer Canada.”120 For

Cook, at least, it seemed France’s return to North America promised the ousting of

Britain from Quebec and a return to the old alliance system. It was more imperative than ever, then, to promote rebel interests in the northern borderlands.

The Iroquois did their best to persuade the Kahnawakes to bring Cook’s activities to heel in a council at Fort Niagara in August of 1778. “I am come here this day,” the

Iroquois delegate at that council began his speech to the St. Lawrence Indians, “to see you that are living in quiet, from a place exposed to tempests” and “it is a kind of storm that has drove me now before you.”121 The “way to be strong” is “to be all united and

Unanimous,” he informed them, and for that purpose “I invite two Chiefs from each

Village in Canada to come to our Council.”122 “It is your business Brother of

Cachnawago to answer for the rest,” he concluded, “as you are the principal Village of

118 The defeat of John Burgoyne seems to have had little impact on Britain’s Native allies, however, who for the most part remained committed to their support for the empire after the general’s surrender. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, March 12, 1778,” CO 5/79/73-76, TNA. 119 Peter Stephen du Ponceau, “Notes and Documents: The Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, Part I,” ed. James L. Whitehead, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 63, no. 2 (April 1939): 222. 120 Ponceau, “Notes and Documents,” 222. 121 “Minutes of a Council at Niagara, August 1778,” in Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC- Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21779, B-119, reproduction copy number H-1450, 1, LAC. 122 “Minutes of a Council at Niagara, August 1778,” in Haldimand Papers, 1-4.

220 Canada.”123 For the members of the Iroquois Confederacy allied to the British, then, the best means of controlling the activities of those from the St. Lawrence who leaned toward the rebels was to reassert Sir William Johnson’s vision for the northern borderlands.

Unfortunately for the Iroquois delegates at the Niagara council, the Kahnawakes present had no intention of accommodating that vision. Instead, as they had so many times before, the representatives of that town did their best to demur. “As we are several

Villages it will be necessary to consult together,” they responded to the Iroquois speech, and “hope you my Brother will have a little patience.”124 When the Kahnawakes sought to impose their own goals on the St. Lawrence Indians, then, they were the principal community of a united Seven Nations Confederacy. When others did, on the other hand, they were simply one of several villages. Kahnawake, it was clear, was still doing its best to evade the authority of the Iroquois.

As Daniel Claus made clear in a letter to his London superiors two months later, the Kahnawakes’ best included allowing Louis Cook to continue his efforts to stir up support for the rebels in Iroquoia. During the meeting at Fort Niagara, Claus had castigated them for “keeping a clear Path” to the “Fires of your Father’s Enemies” and

“discourag[ing] your White Brethren” in Quebec “by bringing false Reports & lying papers amongst them tending to poison their happiness.”125 They did likewise to the south, where Claus recorded in November that the “rebel Caghnawgey” Indians had

“taken Refuge among the rebel Oneidas, and are influencing them & the 6 Nations with a parcel of Falsehoods” claiming “that Canada must fall this Winter or next Summer” to a

123 “Minutes of a Council at Niagara, August 1778,” in Haldimand Papers, 4. 124 “Minutes of a Council at Niagara, August 1778,” in Haldimand Papers, 4. 125 “Minutes of a Council at Niagara, August 1778,” in Haldimand Papers, 7.

221 French invasion.126 They also, Claus claimed, had told the Iroqouis “that all the

Canadians and Indians were in the Rebels Interest on Accot. of their Alliance with the

French” and if the “6 Natns. attempt anything agst.” the Oneidas then “all 7 Nations in

Canada would support & stand up for them.”127 While the Kahnawakes still in Quebec may have only been several villages when the Iroquois sought to impose their authority upon them, then, it seemed the Kahnawakes in Iroquoia were once more the principals of a united confederacy for the purposes of making threats.

As Claus revealed in the same letter, however, the rebel-leaning Kahnawakes had through their activities in the borderlands managed to connect the St. Lawrence Indians to

Iroquoia in ways they had very much not intended. Unlike their neighbors in Kahnawake, it seemed, the residents of Akwesasne conveived of the Iroquois and Seven Nations

Confederacies as one. “These St. Regis Indians to the Number of 25 or 30,” Claus wrote in November of 1778, “received a Message from the 6 Nats, last Spring to join them in their operations against the Rebels” and “could not well reject said Invitation.”128 What’s more, according to Claus, John Campbell (Carleton’s chosen agent to the St. Lawrence

Indians) “disapproved of their Going considering them as Indns. under his Direction” but the Akwesasnes declared themselves not “capable of Distinguishing differ. Departments lately arranged by Governmt.”129 Their reasoning, they informed Campbell, was that the

“7 Nats, of Canada & the 6 united Nats, of New York were united into a confederacy by the late Sr. Wm. Johnson.” 130 This would no doubt have been of some alarm to the

126 “Daniel Claus to , November 19, 1778,” in Maryly Barton Penrose, ed., Indian Affairs Papers, American Revolution (Franklin Park, NJ: Liberty Bell Associates, 1981), 175. 127 “Daniel Claus to Frederick Haldimand, November 19, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 175. 128 “Daniel Claus to Frederick Haldimand, November 19, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 176. 129 “Daniel Claus to Frederick Haldimand, November 19, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 176. 130 “Daniel Claus to Frederick Haldimand, November 19, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 176.

222 Kahnawakes. After all, Akwesasne was a satellite community that had been founded by

Mohawks from their town and had spent the years following Britain’s conquest of

Quebec relying on Kahnawake’s leaders to mediate the dispute with the Odanaks. The twists and turns of the war had evidently frayed that connection and presented the

Akwesasnes with a chance to perhaps assume their parent community’s place as the principal village in the St. Lawrence River Valley.

While the Akwesasnes sought to reshape the confederacies of the northern borderlands in their image from Quebec, the rebel-leaning Kahnawakes did likewise in

Iroquoia. With the Oneidas’ formal adoption of an alliance with the rebels during the

Saratoga Campaign, the defensive league they had formed with the Kahnawakes and

Tuscaroras was thrust into the open. In a meeting with Philip Schuyler on October 21,

1778 they referred to their alliance as the “three Nations,” adopting the language of a formal confederacy to present themselves to the rebels as a united front.131 Evidently, they hoped this position of strength would make the rebels more likely to fulfil the perceived obligations of their alliance, informing Schuyler that “we the three Nations now present are one” but “pining in poverty” because of “our Attachment to you.”132

“You have frequently told us that you had gained signal Victories when you were only thirteen confederate States,” they chided him, but the “Accession of France to your

Alliance has given you a fourteenth” and “we hope you are now supplied and will impart some to us.”133 The colonial rebellion might have brought France back to North

America’s shores, but an alliance with the rebels was no easy road. Any Native ally of the

131 “Indian Affairs Commissioners Meeting with Three Nations, October 21, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 158. 132 “Indian Affairs Commissioners Meeting with Three Nations, October 21, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 160. 133 “Indian Affairs Commissioners Meeting with Three Nations, October 21, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 159.

223 rebellion would have to do everything in their power to coax the rebels into upholding the expectations of indigenous diplomacy, a task that required both patience and leverage.

Louis Cook did his part by doing his best to endear himself to the rebel commanders of the region, particularly Philip Schuyler and the marquis de Lafayette, for whom he performed preliminary scouting efforts in anticipation of the latter’s invasion of

Quebec. Schuyler documented Cook’s activities in a letter to Henry Laurens, informing the President of Congress that he had sent Cook along with “three or four trusty Oneidas to burn if possible the Enemy’s Vessels on Ontario” in preparation for “our Expedition into Canada.”134 He also asked Cook to “engage some of our Caghnawaga Friends to give the earliest intelligence of the movement of the Enemy.”135 When Lafayette’s plans fell through rebel authorities tasked Cook with preventing an invasion from the other direction. According to James Dean in a letter to Philip Schuyler on March 29, 1779,

Cook had “received undoubted Intelligence” British-allied Iroquois had gone among the

St. Lawrence Indians to bring warriors south “as soon as the Season will permit.”136 In response, Dean recorded, Cook traveled to Quebec “to frustrate the Design of the Enemy as to his Countrymen and prevent their being imposed on.”137 He was largely successful, preventing the British-allied Iroquois from relying on assistance from the St. Lawrence

Indians in their growing civil war.138

134 “Philip Schuyler to Henry Laurens, March 15, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 120. 135 “Philip Schuyler to Henry Laurens, March 15, 1778,” in Penrose, ed., 120. 136 “James Dean to Philip Schuyler, March 29, 1779,” in Penrose, ed., 192. 137 “James Dean to Philip Schuyler, March 29, 1779,” in Penrose, ed., 193. 138 As William Hart has observed, Cook’s activities took place within the context of a broader history of black actors serving as go-betweens on the borderlands between Quebec and New York, a history that made him particularly effective during the War for Independence. See William B. Hart, “Black ‘Go- Betweens’ and the Mutability of ‘Race,’ Status, and Identity on New York’s Pre-Revolutionary Frontier,” in Andrew Robert Lee Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 88-113.

224 That war reached new heights as it stretched its tendrils into the furthest reaches of Iroquoia in the summer of 1779.139 Hoping to discourage the British-allied Iroquois from attacking rebel-leaning settlements, George Washington ordered the destruction of the village of Oquaga on the Susquehanna River in October of 1778, which motivated the

Iroquois in turn to retaliate with an attack on the rebel outpost at Cherry Valley.140 Like

Jane McCrea’s death, the attack on Cherry Valley became a cause célèbre for rebel propagandists, who filled their newspapers with lurid tales of Native cruelty and wanton murder.141 Fueled by such tales Congressional leaders ordered Washington to organize another campaign into Native lands, this time against the Senecas who seemed to have committed most of the acts of violence during the attack. That campaign, under Generals

John Sullivan and James Clinton, marched into Iroquoia in June of 1779, proceeded to lay waste to forty Native villages, and left thousands of Iroquois families without food or shelter.142

With Iroquoia shattered and many of its inhabitants seeking refuge at Fort

Niagara, many among Britain’s allies turned their eyes northward for assistance from the

139 It is important to note that, as Karim Tiro observes, the Iroquois civil war was at its most violent when it pitted Native and colonial fighters against one another. When the rebel- and British-allied Indians met in battle, meanwhile, they typically chose to pursue a more limited warfare against one another. They may have destroyed each other’s villages and homes, but generally spared one another’s lives. See Karim Tiro, “A 'Civil' War'? Rethinking Iroquois Participation in the American Revolution,” Explorations in Early American Culture 4 (2000): 148-65. 140 See “Oquaga: Dissension and Destruction on the Susquehanna,” in Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 115-37. 141 See Stephen Paradis, “Cherry Valley and the Uses of Memory” (MA thesis, University of Michigan- Flint, 2009). 142 The campaign under Sullivan and Clinton was part of a much larger effort by rebel authorities to combat Indian attacks in the borderlands, but is by far the most notable. See Barbara Alice Mann, George Washington’s War on Native America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). While hailed as a success at the time, the rebel invasion of Iroquoia largely failed to prevent British-allied Indians from continuing and even stepping up their attacks on rebel-leaning settlements. See Joseph R. Fischer, A Well- Executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois, July-September 1779 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008). Two years after the campaign, Guy Johnson reported that Iroquois attacks in the borderlands had been overwhelmingly successful and forced the rebels to contract their boundaries. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, October 11, 1781,” CO 5/82/248-249, TNA.

225 St. Lawrence Indians in their plans for a retaliation.143 As a result, British officials in

Quebec began receiving requests to “send frequent parties of Canadian Indians” south because it would “be of great service.”144 In response to this request, the new governor of

Quebec, Frederick Haldimand, informed his agents among the St. Lawrence Indians that the Iroquois had sent for “every assistance that can be collected” from the “7 Nations of

Canada” and ordered them “to collect as many of them as can [be] done with expedition.”145 Those agents, in turn, insisted that the St. Lawrence Indians, and particularly the Akwesasnes, “showed much zeal for Government” and wanted “to go instantly to the assistance of their brothers” in Iroquoia.146 The Kahnawakes, however, once more proved recalcitrant. As Guy Johnson told it in a later letter to George Germain,

“they had declined going” to the relief of the Iroquois because they “opposed any measures against the Oneidas.”147 Since that was the “only object then in consideration,”

Johnson claimed, Britain’s campaign to retaliate against its enemies in the northern borderlands ground to a halt before it could even begin.148 The defensive league of the

Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and Kahnawakes had, it seemed, proven a stronger bind than Sir

William Johnson’s vision of a union between the Native inhabitants of Quebec and

Iroquoia.

Changing Allegiances

While the Kahnawakes refused to attack their Oneida allies, that did not mean they continued to hold strong to their support to the rebels as the war wound to a close

143 Guy Johnson believed that if such a retaliation was not organized, Britain might lose the Iroquois as allies. See “Guy Johnson to George Germain, September 5, 1779,” CO 5/80/139-140, TNA. 144 “Joseph Brant to Mason Bolton, August 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:198. 145 “Frederick Haldimand to Alexander Fraser, September 2, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:199. 146 “Alexander Fraser to Frederick Haldimand, August 22, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:188. 147 “Guy Johnson to George Germain, November 11, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:234. 148 “Guy Johnson to George Germain, November 11, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:234.

226 and it became increasingly apparent that France had no interest in regaining its territory in Quebec. The collapse of the marquis de Lafayette’s plans for an invasion of that province in 1778 proved a major turning point for the rebel-leaning Kahnawakes in residence among the Oneidas in Iroquoia. With hopes of a return to French rule in

Quebec seeming less and less plausible as time went on, many Kahnawake fighters began returning home and resigned themselves to the perceived necessity of repairing their relationship with Britain. John Butler recorded the beginnings of this shift as early as July of 1779 in a letter to Frederick Haldimand, writing that a “Cocnawaga Indian who came from Oneida” had informed him that the majority of the “Cochnawagos who were among the Oneidas are returned home.”149 According to Butler’s informant, named Iwa-re-sa, those Kahnawakes were “sorry that they have suffered themselves to be so long imposed upon and intend earnestly to advise every one of their people to break off all connection with the rebels and listen no more to their falsehoods.”150 It was encouraging intelligence that augured well for Britain’s ability to govern in Quebec as the war continued. Still that did not mean that the Kahnawakes would no longer be a thorn in the empire’s side.

Indeed, despite a majority of the Kahnawakes abandoning their hopes for a

French renaissance in Quebec, there remained some who refused to let their dreams die.

Despite his assurances that the Kahnawakes had left Oneida territory, he admitted that there were still “eight of the principal Indians of the Cochnawaga Indians” who were

“much in the interest of the rebels.”151 Those eight, he reported, corresponded with Philip

Schuyler “by means of a negro who is continually going backwards and forwards from

149 “John Butler to Frederick Haldimand, July 21, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:168. 150 “John Butler to Frederick Haldimand, July 21, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:168. 151 “John Butler to Frederick Haldimand, July 21, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:168.

227 thence to Oneida with letters and intelligence, not only from the Indians but also from some French and other white people in the rebel interest.”152 The “negro” to whom Iwa- re-sa referred was almost certainly Louis Cook, whose support for the rebels continued for the remainder of the war. The month before Butler’s letter to Haldimand Cook received a commission as lieutenant colonel from Congress, giving him the highest rank among the Native fighters allied to the rebels and the only known officer of African descent in the Continental Army. The prestige of that promotion, which Cook had advocated for since the beginning of the war, tied the Kahnawake warrior firmly to his support for the rebellion.

Cook wasn’t the only St. Lawrence Indian to hold firm in his attachment to the rebels as the war unfolded. Louis Vincent also remained steadfast in his commitment to the cause and through that commitment served as one of his Wendake family’s main connections to the other side of the conflict. In that capacity he acted for much of the war as a translator for the rebels in their dealings with the Wabanaki Confederacy on the recommendation of Eleazar Wheelock’s son John. His support for the rebels never translated into the sort of elevation Cook enjoyed, however, likely a reflection of the limited sway he had in his hometown when compared to that of the Hurons of Detroit.

Because of the Detroit Hurons’ influence in Wendake, the leaders of that community continued to insist that they were “all of the same mind to assist one another and our great Father King George” even after their bitter taste of defeat in the Burgoyne

Expedition.153 They also informed British officials that they had disowned the rebel-

152 “John Butler to Frederick Haldimand, July 21, 1779,” in Smy, ed., 2:168. 153 “Council of the Loretto in Montreal, August 31, 1780,” in Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District of North America fonds, Series 2, reproduction copy number H-2944, Lot 624, 1, LAC.

228 leaning members of the Vincent family, declaring that the “Bostonian Huron” could not

“come to the Village” if they did so to recruit for the rebels.154 It was perhaps because he realized how little influence Vincent held among the Wendakes that Washington rejected his request for a lieutenant’s commission in 1781, consoling him instead with the gift of a horse because, in the general’s words, “he importunes me” for it.155 Despite this letdown,

Vincent remained among the rebels. The pressure from his connections at Dartmouth and the other members of the Vincent family was simply too great for there to be any other possibility.

Other early adherents of the rebellion from the St. Lawrence River Valley had more independence than Vincent and thus weren’t nearly as fixed in their position as the war progressed. Cook and Vincent’s counterpart from Odanak, Joseph-Louis Gill, suffered a change of heart not unlike Iwa-re-sa’s as it became clear that Britain would retain its control of the province. Gill had fled Odanak in 1778 after five rebel prisoners escaping confinement in Quebec were recaptured with a map to New England that British officials in the province suspected he had drawn. The Abenaki warrior took residence for the next two years in the village of Coos near Lake Mephremagog along what is now the border between Vermont and Quebec. Though many of that town’s inhabitants were simply temporary residents following seasonal hunting patterns, a sizeable portion of its population were rebel-leaning Abenakis. As historian Colin Calloway has observed, the rebel authorities near Coos sought to use the Abenakis living there to influence the much

154 “Étienne Girault to Frederick Haldimand, July 30, 1779,” in Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC-Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21777, B-117, reproduction copy number H-1450, 141, LAC. 155 “George Washington to Jacob Bayley, June 9, 1781,” George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, 1697-1799, MSS 44693, Reel 078, 1, Library of Congress.

229 larger Wabanaki Confederacy just as the British did with Odanak to the north.156 Fully aware of this fact, Gill did what he could to take advantage of it for his own purposes.

Indeed, during his time in the village Gill did his best to leverage the support he had gathered in the north prior to the war to advance his standing with the rebels. Shortly after his arrival in Coos, he informed Colonel Timothy Bedel of New Hampshire with his typical penchant for exaggeration that the Odanaks “were all willing to Join the United

States.”157 His hope that Gill might be telling the truth convinced Washington to recommend him for a commission in the Continental Army the following year, writing that “giving this Indian a command, with liberty to engage such a number of his Tribe as are willing to take a part with him” could “be really useful.”158 The recommendation seemed to offer the Abenaki warrior his much longed-for advancement. Congress embraced Washington’s suggestion the following year, granting Gill the rank of major in

April of 1780 and setting aside funds for him to raise as many companies of Odanak warriors as he could recruit.

Congressional dreams for a company of Odanak warriors to join the Continental

Army died three months later. Hoping to win support from those of Gill’s allies that remained in Odanak, Haldimand agreed to pardon the Abenaki leader and sought to persuade him to return to the northern province. Like Iwa-re-sa, Gill may have been more likely to accept Haldimand’s offer and return to life with the British in Quebec upon realizing that France had no plans to retake the province. There may have also been more personal concerns at play in his decision. Gill’s promotion to major by the rebels and

156 See “Odanak: Abenaki Ambiguity in the North,” in Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 69-89. 157 “Timothy Bedel to George Washington, November 5, 1778,” in Crackel et al., eds. 158 “George Washington to Samuel Huntington, November 3, 1779,” in Crackel et al., eds.

230 former influence in Odanak did not guarantee that he would enjoy any real sway in a community like Coos with residents from a wide variety of backgrounds who held any number of political affiliations. It was perhaps his realization of that fact that ultimately made him most amenable to Haldimand’s olive branch. A return to Odanak not only represented a homecoming for Gill but a reunion with his long-cultivated base of support.

So, in August of 1780, Gill surrendered to British officials in Quebec and swore an oath of loyalty to King George III two months later.

Within a few short months, however, it had become apparent to Quebec’s governor that Gill was up to his old tricks. Odanak politics seethed once more with the dispute between Gill’s faction of young warriors and the elders of the town’s council.

Hoping to settle matters in the town once and for all, Alexander Fraser met with Gill at

Odanak in February of 1781 and observed that “Evil Councils” had “divided them” and prevented them from being “useful to His Majesty’s Service.”159 When he asked the

Abenaki leader what he believed the source of that issue was Gill seized his moment, claiming that the “reason the Abenakee Indians were not in a state to be more useful to

Govt was oweing to the present Chiefs being too ill tempered and over bearing to the warriors.”160 According to Gill, then, the divide between the council and his supporters had prevented the warriors from fighting on Britain’s behalf. Hoping that with Gill’s party in charge the warriors might act differently, Fraser offered to make the warrior’s son Antoine “Chief provided he would undertake to unite the Village, and conduct them

159 “Substance of What Passed between Capt Fraser Depy Supd of Indian Affairs and Joseph Louis of St Francis, February 5, 1781,” in Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC-Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21772, B-112, reproduction copy number H-1449, 3 LAC. 160 “Substance of What Passed between Capt Fraser Depy Supd of Indian Affairs and Joseph Louis of St Francis, February 5, 1781,” in Haldimand Papers, 4.

231 in a loyal and useful manner.”161 Gill instantly agreed to the proposal and, in return,

Fraser promised that Gill’s son would “be appointed Chief as soon as the family wou[l]d give a thorough proof of their sincerity in the cause of Govt by striking a blow against the

Rebels.”162 Two decades of ambition were finally coming to fruition. Gill was just a few short steps away from being considered the leading man in Odanak by the British officials of Quebec. All he had to do was prove his switch in allegiance was final.

So, two months later he set out to do just that, leading a party from Odanak to

Coos on a mission to capture New Hampshire Major Benjamin Whitcomb. Accompanied by a party of Odanak warriors who were instructed to both observe and assist him, he soon took Whitcomb prisoner along with a man named Abel Larned and began marching them back in the direction of Odanak. After the group chose to make camp only a few miles from home, however, Whitcomb managed to steal a canoe and escape. Gill ordered the other Odanaks not to pursue the fleeing captive and instead continue their trek home to turn in their remaining prisoner. Still suspicious of Gill’s loyalties, Haldimand ordered the Indian agent Luc Schmid to investigate matter. The next month, Schmid wrote to inform the governor that the other Odanaks on the voyage had informed him that Gill had deliberately aided his prisoner’s escape “because Whitcomb had promised him that if the

Bostonians come to take Canada their Villages would not be burnt.”163 Gill had lost his first wife and son Xavier in Robert Rogers’ attack on Odanak in 1759. The prospect of a

161 “Substance of What Passed between Capt Fraser Depy Supd of Indian Affairs and Joseph Louis of St Francis, February 5, 1781,” in Haldimand Papers, 4. 162 “Substance of What Passed between Capt Fraser Depy Supd of Indian Affairs and Joseph Louis of St Francis, February 5, 1781,” in Haldimand Papers, 4-5. 163 “Luc Schmid to Frederick Haldimand, June 17, 1781,” Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC- Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21777, B-117, reproduction copy number H-1450, 287, LAC.

232 similar experience had, evidently, convinced him to put his own ambitions at risk in the interest of Odanak’s safety.

Whitcomb’s gratitude didn’t last long. The following summer, Schmid learned from a group of rebel prisoners that the major had threatened “to take Joseph Louis and to burn his house.”164 Like many rebels he had come over the course of the war to treat all

Indians as hostile regardless of their individual actions, a fact that may have pushed Gill into the arms of the British for good. Unfortunately for him, the British authorities with whom he had made his peace had begun over the course of the war to treat the St.

Lawrence Indians with constant suspicion. While the Iroquois to the south had almost entirely chosen to ally with the British, the Native communities of the St. Lawrence River

Valley had done so only under duress. Many had ultimately chosen to fight alongside

Britain and even most of those like Gill and Louis Cook who had supported the rebels eventually returned home and did their best to live in what they had come to realize would never again be a province ruled by France. The obvious reluctance of that choice, whenever it was made, had thoroughly alienated an empire that after years of fighting for the allegiances of the St. Lawrence Indians came to demand their loyalty in uncompromising terms. Warriors like Gill may have been returning to old homes as the war came to a close, then, but the world they entered upon their return was one of new challenges. More ominously, it was also one of new neighbors.

Those new neighbors, Loyalist and Native refugees from the lower thirteen colonies, had little inclination to conform to the boundaries – both figurative and literal – that the St. Lawrence Indians had established for their world over the course of the

164 “Luc Schmid to Frederick Haldimand, June 18, 1782,” in Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC- Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21777, B-117, reproduction copy number H-1450, 333, LAC.

233 colonial era. Many of the Loyalists hailed from colonies that existed to curtail the sovereignty of indigenous communities. Many of the Native newcomers, meanwhile, belonged to confederacies that had long sought to sabotage the sovereignty of the St.

Lawrence Indians in particular. The Native inhabitants of the St. Lawrence River Valley had spent the previous two decades seeking to accommodate themselves to the world as it stood after France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War, playing their British and indigenous neighbors off one another to maintain their independence. The rebellion of the lower thirteen colonies had, for a brief moment, offered a return to things as they stood prior to that defeat. The experiences of the 1775 Quebec Campaign and its consequences over the course of the war that followed drove many of the northern province’s Indians to conclude that that return could not be achieved. As a result, fewer and fewer St.

Lawrence Indians held out hope for anything other than a British-ruled Quebec.

Unfortunately, as that shift occurred British thought began trending in the other direction,

Britain’s representatives in the northern province interpreting indigenous actions as evidence of disloyalty. The St. Lawrence Indians became Britain’s internal enemies at the very moment that new threats to the sovereignty of their communities arrived in the province. The walls they built to protect themselves from those threats paralleled those built by Britain to segregate its subjects from the St. Lawrence Indians’ perceived disloyalty. As those walls rose, a new sense of what it meant to be Native in Quebec bloomed within.

234 Chapter 5: Governed by Conquests: Party Politics, Class Tensions, and Popular

Resistance in Quebec, 1760-1786

After the province of Quebec was ceded to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years’ War, British officials sought to govern their empire’s new colony by establishing a collaborative relationship with its Francophone elite. Such efforts were complicated on three fronts: the landholding class’s (seigneurs) jealous guardianship of its own prerogatives, the agricultural lower class’s (habitants) resistance to military service, and the intrusion of Anglophone colonists into those class conflicts upon their arrival in Quebec. Eventually those tensions coalesced into two political factions over the issue of how the province would be governed, with many seigneurs and some British colonists favoring rule by council and many British colonists and some

Francophone inhabitants favoring the establishment of an assembly. Both of these parties claimed the support of the habitants, who remained largely aloof until the invasion of

Quebec at the beginning of the War for Independence in 1775. The widespread resistance of that group to British efforts to recruit them into active military service (with notable exceptions) informed the strategic considerations of military commanders throughout the war.

Such forces were no less impactful for Britain’s rebellious colonists when they encountered them in 1775. Though many habitants greeted rebel soldiers to their province with enthusiasm in that first year of the War for Independence, few (again with notable exceptions) ultimately proved willing to answer the Continental Army’s calls for volunteers. When by 1776 the dire straits of Continental soldiers in Quebec drove them to treat the habitants with suspicion and cruelty, that unwillingness blossomed into

235 opposition. The growing popular resistance to the rebel occupation of Quebec played a key role in ending it. Though rebel leaders failed to fully appreciate the depth of

Quebecois hatred for the lower thirteen colonies, they perceived enough to make them wary of repetition. As a result, the insistence of those among the Quebecois who joined the rebellion after the 1775 invasion that the province remained ripe for the taking generally fell on deaf ears. Based on their experiences at the beginning of the war, rebel leaders chose instead to believe that the Quebecois were not yet ready to join their union.

Unfortunately for the British, the same period had taught them that the Quebecois were not yet ready for their union either. The Quebecois might have been willing to drive invaders from their homes, but that did not mean their loyalty was above suspicion. As the war came to a close, then, British officials once more struggled to determine how the province should best be governed.

This course of events had important ramifications for how the Quebecois themselves came to define their identity in the years that followed. Their experiences in the aftermath of their province’s conquest by Britain – and especially in the 1775 Quebec

Campaign – made clear that their conquerors would accept their inclusion in the British

Empire on conditional terms at best. Their neighbors to the south, meanwhile, offered even less attractive terms for their incorporation into a new nation as an alternative to

British governance. The result was a Quebecois identity built on a conditional loyalty to

Britain and a fervent rejection of southern rule. The result was a further marginalization of Britain’s Francophone subjects within the empire, a segregation that allowed the

Quebecois to preserve their culture as distinct from that of other British subjects but hindered their ability to influence imperial affairs. In consequence, the boundaries rising

236 between the Quebecois and their compatriots across the continent and the empire came to play a growing role in their lives.

Britain’s Initial Rule in Quebec

This process was set in motion by the fall of Quebec in September of 1759.

Popular conceptions of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on September 13 of that year depict the confrontation between General James Wolfe and the marquis de Montcalm as the death blow of French rule in Quebec.1 In reality, however, the defeat of Montcalm’s forces that day did not even achieve the surrender of the provincial capital. Montcalm himself had written derisively two years earlier that the defenses surrounding Quebec were “so ridiculous and so bad” that the city would be taken as soon as besieged,” but ultimately it took the British nearly a week to gain control of the capital.2 In the meantime, France’s governor in the colony, Pierre de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil-

Cavagnial, escaped the British cordon of the city of Quebec and began to coordinate resistance efforts from Montreal. Vaudreuil’s departure left Quebec in the hands of

Quebecois seigneur and King’s Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Roch de Ramezay. Two days after the battle between Montcalm and Wolfe, Ramezay received a petition from

Quebec’s leading residents begging him not to expose “their women and their children” to the “rigors of an assault and famine.”3 Depending as he did almost entirely upon the

1 For an examination of this tendency within the context of the development of historical memories surrounding the conquest of Quebec, see Michel Ducharme, “Interpreting the Past, Shaping the Present, and Envisioning the Future: Remembering the Conquest in Nineteenth-Century Québec,” in Remembering 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Memory, ed. Phillip A. Buckner and John G. Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 142-66. 2 Louis-Joseph Montcalm de Saint-Véran, Journal Du Marquis De Montcalm Durant Ses Campagnes En Canada De 1756 à 1759, ed. H. R. Casgrain (Québec: L. J. Demers, 1895), 308. 3 “Copie de la requeste des bourgeois de Québec, présentée au commandant et officiers majors de la ville de Québec,” in Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay, Mémoire Du Sieur De Ramezay, Commandant à Québec, Au Sujet De La Reddition De Cette Ville, Le 18 Septembre 1759, d’après Un Manuscrit Aux Archives Du Bureau De La Marine, à Paris (Québec: Des Presses de J. Lovell, 1861), 27.

237 Quebecois militia to defend the capital after Vaudreuil’s flight, Ramezay soon realized that his position was untenable. Three days later, he signed the articles of capitulation offered him by Wolfe’s successor, General James Murray. The British had, in their moment of victory, been offered their first lesson in governing the colony: without the

Quebecois, Quebec would fall.

With that lesson in mind the capital city’s first military governor after Ramezay’s surrender, Colonel Robert Monckton, issued a proclamation aimed at mitigating any potential sources of unrest among the Quebecois. Should the newly conquered populace of Quebec adjust to British rule peaceably, the proclamation promised, it would be allowed to continue with life as before. “All Canadians are at liberty to return to their parishes, to take possession of the lands, dwellings and effects belonging to them, to reap their harvests, [and] to practice their religion,” Monckton declared, and may do so

“without the least impediment on the part of the English.4 We “have not come to ruin and destroy the Canadians,” he assured his audience, “but to enable them to enjoy the mildness of a just and equitable government.”5 Of course, they would only receive that treatment, he concluded, if “they surrender their arms, take the oath of fidelity and remain peaceably in their homes.”6 In the following months, the British for the most part adhered to Monckton’s proclamation. Houses and farms had been retained, Mass had been held, and (if they kept their heads down) the Quebecois had been left in peace. As British officials in both North America and London well knew, however, a more long-term

4 “Proclamation by Monckton, September 22, 1759,” in Arthur G. Doughty, ed., Report of the Public Archives for the Year 1918 (Ottawa: J. De Labroguerie Taché, Printer to the King, 1920), 1. 5 “Proclamation by Monckton, September 22, 1759,” in Doughty, ed., 1. 6 “Proclamation by Monckton, September 22, 1759,” in Doughty, ed., 1.

238 solution was necessary if they were to maintain their hold over the Francophone residents of Quebec.

While accommodating the Catholicism of the Quebecois was of obvious importance in achieving their aims, Britain’s representatives in the province quickly came to believe that securing the support of the seigneurial class was of more pressing and paramount concern. From the very outset of France’s arrival in what became Quebec, the seigneurs served as the chief architects of the colony’s growth and development by encouraging immigration, managing land distribution, and filling administrative positions.7 As officers in the compagnies franches de la marine (permanent colonial troops stationed in outposts across French America) the seigneurial class was additionally instrumental as representatives of empire in the borderlands of the pays d’en haut and trans-Appalachian west.8 It is therefore perhaps natural that British officials would identify the seigneurs’ support as key to their future rule in Quebec. What they gradually came to learn, however, was that the provincial elite in their new colony were neither entirely willing to adhere to metropolitan aims nor wholly capable of enforcing those aims amongst the other classes of Quebec when the will to do so struck. It was a lesson their French predecessors knew well. As historian Louise Dechêne has argued, seigneurial power in New France was not something elite landowners imposed upon their habitants tenants but rather a negotiated concept held in check by acts of lower class resistance.9 Christian Ayne Crouch, meanwhile, has contended that the relationship

7 “Aristocratic Ascendancy,” in Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes 1740-1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 100-29. 8 Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 50-51. 9 See Louise Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal, trans. Liana Vardi (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993).

239 between colonial marines and the metropole was similarly negotiated, resulting in the frequent subordination of imperial aims to seigneurial ones.10 While securing the support of seigneurs was undoubtedly crucial to British rule in Quebec, then, it by no means guaranteed an easy transfer of power.

The Seigneurs Make Their Choice

Britain’s hopes for the Quebecois elite were further complicated by the terms dictated for that transfer in the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years’ War. No doubt written with Britain’s ongoing expulsion of French colonists from Acadia in mind, the fourth article of that document guaranteed the Quebecois an opportunity to choose their own destinies. They could either remain in the province with the right to peaceably practice their Catholic faith or “retire with all safety and freedom wherever they shall think proper” for a term of eighteen months.11 While ninety-five percent of Quebec’s inhabitants chose to remain in the province, many of the political and military elite that had represented their empire across French America had the financial resources and metropolitan connections to incentivize a move to France.12 The decision to leave their homeland for uncertain prospects in the metropole was by no means an easy one and was rendered even less appealing by the Crown’s decision not to fully honor its colonial debts and to segregate Quebecois emigres within the province of Touraine. By the next decade, a majority of those who had chosen their empire over their homes had decided to return to Quebec or departed in search of better lives in France’s remaining colonies.

10 See Christian Ayne Crouch, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). 11 “Treaty of Paris, 1763,” Avalon Project, accessed May 22, 2020, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris763.asp. 12 See “The Losing Face of France,” in Crouch, Nobility Lost, 126-52.

240 Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry’s later recollections of his experiences in

France after the conquest of Quebec makes it clear why so many chose their home province over the metropole. According to Léry, upon his 1761 arrival in France with his wife and four children the ministry there subjected him to “all the delays” and “all the refusals imaginable” during his efforts to gain some recompense for the losses he had sustained in service to the French Empire.13 “I in vain represented my services,” he later recalled, but this ministry’s representatives “always ended” their discussions with the words “Canada is no longer ours and all these services have been useless.”14 It was a telling indication of the French government’s changing estimation of the value of the

Quebecois to its empire. In their minds, Quebec was no longer a problem with which they wished to deal. It may have been a natural decision for them to make, but it had hard consequences for those like Léry who had braved the vagaries of a trans-Atlantic voyage only to come face to face with the vagaries of an indifferent metropole.

Others never even made it out of the gate. After gaining considerable notoriety during the Seven Years’ War as one of the marines who were unable to prevent the

Native attack against British prisoners of war leaving Fort William Henry in 1757, Luc de la Corne (better known as Saint-Luc) had little expectation he would be able to live safely in Quebec after its surrender. He thus chose to take ship for France in September of 1761 with his brother Louis (the Chevalier de La Corne), two of his nephews, two of his sons, and “several other French officers and soldiers.”15 With the exception of Saint-

13 “Memorial of the Chevalier de Léry,” in Douglas Brymner, ed., Report on Canadian Archives (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1888), 27. 14 “Memorial of the Chevalier de Léry,” in Brymner, ed., 29. 15 Luc de La Corne, “Journal of the voyage of M. Saint-Luc de La Corne Esquire, in the Auguste, in the year 1761 [English transcription],” MG 15.43 A.1.e, Dr. George G. Campbell fonds, Beaton Institute Archives, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1.

241 Luc and six other men, those passengers (including Saint-Luc’s family) perished in a shipwreck off the Acadian coast.

The harsh treatment Saint-Luc received at the hands of Mother Nature on his journey stood in stark contrast to the generous assistance he obtained from the British officials he encountered on his long trek home. A British sergeant at Bay Verte, who learned that the seigneur was near starvation, resupplied him unsolicited. “We received much consideration” from “this sergeant,” Saint-Luc recorded, who “very generously shared with us an abundance of good things that he had for himself.”16 “I was well aware,” he admitted, “that I owed my very life to his kind attentions.”17 The next day, he arrived at Fort Cumberland, where he “was flattered by the welcome accorded to me” by the commander, who expressed his “regret for the loss I had sustained,” averred his

“pleasure at my having survived,” and “procured for me all available comforts that one could desire.”18 By the time he reached the city of Quebec on February 23, Saint-Luc had determined to abandon his plans for a new life in France. He had, he declared,

“undergone too much suffering to expose myself to new tribulation.”19 Assured by his experiences with the British officials he encountered during his journey that he might live peaceably in his home province, Saint-Luc made his peace with the new rulers of

Quebec.

Pierre du Calvet, a Huguenot merchant who immigrated to Quebec from

Bordeaux in the midst of the Seven Years’ War and later purchased a seigneury, recorded a similar experience with British officials during his efforts to liquidate family holdings

16 La Corne, “Journal,” 21. 17 La Corne, “Journal,” 21. 18 La Corne, “Journal,” 22. 19 La Corne, “Journal,” 19.

242 in France after the deaths of his uncle and father in 1763. Upon his arrival in Paris, Calvet was able to secure the personal intervention of the British embassy in France. Without the embassy’s help, Calvet’s hopes would almost certainly have been dashed. French law prohibited Protestants from selling land and it took “many conferences and some pretty warm ones” between the British and the French ministry to obtain a royal license permitting Calvet to sell his family’s estates.20 He did so at a steep discount, knowing full well that without the help of Britain’s representatives on both sides of the Atlantic he would have received nothing at all.

Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry relied upon British officials in like manner.

As he told it, after exhausting his patience with the French ministry he eventually stopped believing their promises of future compensation and chose instead to call upon the British embassy in Paris. In that meeting, Léry recalled, the embassy’s staff assured him“if I wished to be a British subject” I could “feel assured that I would” receive “His Britannic

Majesty’s support and protection” and “need have no further fear.”21 The “promises of

His Britannic Majesty’s Ministers,” he asserted, left him without doubt that he would

“find the advantages promised and deserved.”22 “I regarded myself from that time,” Léry declared, “as a British subject.”23 Like it had for Saint-Luc and Calvet, the assistance of

Britain’s representatives in his time of need had convinced him to abandon the French

Empire in favor of the British.

Pontiac’s War

20 Pierre du Calvet, The Case of Peter du Calvet (London, UK, 1784), 31. 21 “Memorial of the Chevalier de Léry,” in Brymner, ed., 27; 29. 22 “Memorial of the Chevalier de Léry,” in Brymner, ed., 29. 23 “Memorial of the Chevalier de Léry,” in Brymner, ed., 27.

243 Of course, despite experiences like those of Saint-Luc, Calvet, and Léry, some among the Quebecois elite persisted in their efforts to leave the province, a fact that proved a distinct hindrance to British officials during Pontiac’s War (the first major challenge to their empire’s rule over the territories gained in the 1763 Treaty of Paris).

When he began recruiting Quebecois militiamen for the expeditions Sir William Johnson planned against the Native combatants of the Great Lakes and Ohio countries, General

Murray discovered his first choice to command the detachment, Louis Legardeur de

Repentigny, intended to sail for France. Murray had immediately taken a liking to the marine officer upon meeting him in 1763, writing to General Ralph Burton that “of all the Officers of the Troupes de Colonies, which I have Conversed with he appears to be the best informed & the most polite.”24 It was thus with much chagrin that Murray responded to Repentigny’s rejection of his offer to lead the Quebecois corps the following year, writing that the decision “greatly grieved” him.”25 In the meantime,

Murray had appointed Jean-Baptiste-Marie Blaise des Bergères de Rigauville to command the Quebecois corps, who unlike Repentigny had already announced his intention to remain in the province.

While he had managed to secure a commander for the corps, however, Murray soon discovered that securing the corps itself was a different matter entirely. While their seigneurs debated the pros and cons of a new life in France, few habitants had the resources or connections to even consider such a choice. Absent the wherewithal to

24 “James Murray to Ralph Burton, November 17, 1763,” in Ernest Cruikshank, ed., A History of the Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada: From the Peace of Paris in 1763, to the Present Time. With Illustrative Documents, 3 vols. (Ottawa: Canadian Government, 1919-1920), 1:53. 25 “James Murray to Louis Legardeur de Repentigny, March 17, 1764,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:69.

244 survive outside their communities, the idea of joining an expedition beyond the borders of Quebec held little appeal. This was especially true given the habitants’ lack of familiarity with British militia regulations and overfamiliarity with the ongoing expulsion of the Acadians. Under the circumstances, the habitants feared, joining the Quebecois corps might mean permanent exile from their homes. Murray explained the situation in a letter to Ralph Burton in March of 1764, writing that the “people have got it into their heads, that by taking money, and Voluntary inlisting, they were lyable to remain Soldiers while they lived.”26 It was thus only with extreme difficulty that Murray and his subordinate officers in Quebec were able to garner sufficient recruits for the corps. The habitants had given the British their first taste of what popular resistance would mean for their hopes of governing the province of Quebec. Something would clearly have to be done in order to minimize that resistance as much as possible.

Those of the habitants who wound up joining Sir William Johnson’s expeditions, meanwhile, got their own first taste of what it would mean to contribute to British imperial designs. According to Captain John Montresor, whose command in the expedition under John Bradstreet included the Quebecois volunteers, Murray’s recruits were “indolent, careless of their arms,” and prone to “slovenly service.”27 Hoping to salvage something from the Quebecois volunteers’ participation Montresor had endeavored to determine if any might be useful as marksmen, the results of which effort he failed to record in his journal but which the Indian agents Henry Montour and John

Johnston detailed in a letter to Johnson on May 23. The Quebecois “were tried by the

26 “James Murray to Ralph Burton, March 22, 1764,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:73. 27 John D. Montresor, The Montresor Journals, ed. Gideon D. Scull (New York: New York Historical Society, 1882), 257.

245 Commanding Officer what for marksmen they were,” they wrote, and “in general turned out but very poor.”28 Colonial recruits failing to live up to the expectations of metropolitan commanders was a common occurrence in the era whether the expectations were justified or not, a fact that frequently drove officers to reserve non-military tasks for the colonists that joined their campaigns.29 When Montresor ordered the Quebecois volunteers to perform duties like digging entrenchments, however, they balked, “making

10,000 difficulties as usual” and choosing to “not work ½ the day.”30 Once more, the habitants had proven themselves willing to subvert the aims of their new imperial overlords and all the British could do was throw their hands up in frustration.

Twenty years later, Pierre du Calvet characterized the expedition in terms that starkly contrasted with Montresor’s portrayal of the Quebecois’ service. The campaign had begun, Calvet asserted, with the British commanders “degrading these noble volunteers into servants and lackeys for the entire military force.”31 As marines, the

Quebecois might have been an integral component of French military imperialism in

North America, but according to the Huguenot merchant the British treated them “like beasts of burden.”32 “With the sword at their throats,” Calvet cried, “these wretched

Canadians were forced to build dikes and dig ditches in imminent danger of their lives, while the English soldiers looked on from their military shelters as idle and indifferent spectators.”33 If Calvet is to be believed, it is little wonder then that the Quebecois

28 “Henry Montour and John Johnston to William Johnson, May 23, 1764,” in William Johnson, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921-1965), 11:197-98. 29 See, for example, Fred Anderson, A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Year's War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 30 Montresor, Montresor Journals, 262. 31 “Extract from Appel à la Justice de l’Etat, 1784,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:102. 32 “Extract from Appel à la Justice de l’Etat, 1784,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:102. 33 “Extract from Appel à la Justice de l’Etat, 1784,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:102.

246 volunteers proved resistant to British orders over the course of their participation in

Pontiac’s War and even less wonder that they might be chary of further such participation in future campaigns.

Politics in Post-Conquest Quebec

Of course, whether or not Calvet can be believed is debatable. His account of

Quebecois participation in Pontiac’s War formed part of his 1784 Appel à la Justice de l’Etat (Appeal to the Justice of the State), a collection of public letters written within the context of nearly two decades advocating for an elected assembly in Quebec.34 The section on Pontiac’s War in his Appel underpins a larger argument that hinged upon

Calvet’s assertion that the faithful service of the Quebecois to the British Empire entitled them to the same rights as metropolitan subjects despite their Catholic faith. It was an argument that, whatever its merits, drove the Huguenot merchant to represent the episode twenty years later in terms that directly contradicted the characterization of British officials writing in 1764.

Indeed, according to Calvet, rather than struggling to fill his quota for the

Quebecois corps, General Murray “had only to take the trouble of announcing his wish” and the “Canadians of their own free will rushed in crowds under His Majesty’s

Banner.”35 Montresor, meanwhile, had not found himself commanding unwilling recruits and lackluster soldiers but the “nimblest and bravest of any, in a word, the flower and choice of the whole Provincial Army.”36 Calvet’s assertions, though at variance with the portrayal of events by contemporary sources, is perhaps understandable. After all, it was

34 See Pierre du Calvet, Appel à La Justice De L'Etat (London, 1784). 35 “Extract from Appel à la Justice de l’Etat, 1784,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:102. 36 “Extract from Appel à la Justice de l’Etat, 1784,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:102.

247 highly unlikely metropolitan officials would have been willing to grant an assembly to subjects who hadn’t served the empire willingly and enthusiastically. What’s more, the merchant’s understanding of events was secondhand. Calvet was still in Europe resolving the issue of his French estates at the time of Pontiac’s War and did not return to Quebec until 1766. Whoever his informants may have been, they no doubt had some axes to grind as well.

What is almost certain is that those informants hailed from the growing coalition of individuals supporting the establishment of an assembly in Quebec that Calvet joined when he returned to the province after selling his estates in France. Though typically referred to by historians as the “English party,” the reality of its members’ identities defied the neatness of such a label.37 In addition to Calvet, a recent immigrant from

France, the assembly party’s leading lights included the Eton-educated chief justice

William Hey, the attorney general (son of Huguenot emigres to

London), and one-time merchant of Boston Thomas Walker. Born from the early disputes between Anglophone merchants, British soldiers, and seigneurs in Montreal that led to

Walker’s 1764 assault by a party of seigneurs and soldiers and culminated in James

Murray’s recall to London, this group began to crystallize in the early months of Guy

Carleton’s administration. Initially, the assembly party had much to hope for from the new governor Carleton. It was, after all, the ministry’s standing instruction to the province’s governors to “summon and call a General Assembly of the Freeholders” as

37 For explorations of politics in Quebec during this period and the activities of the so-called “English party” and “French party” (discussed elsewhere in this chapter), see Hilda Neatby, Quebec: the Revolutionary Age 1760-1791 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977); Philip Lawson, The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Year of the American Revolution (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University, 1989); and Michel Ducharme, The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776-1838, trans. Peter Feldstein (Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014).

248 soon as they deemed practicable.38 Carleton could not very well fulfill those instructions by establishing ties to the opponents of an assembly in Quebec.

Those opponents, termed the “French party” by historians despite hailing like their adversaries from a variety of backgrounds, preferred rule by a more selective governor’s council.39 Led by the Scottish former surgeon’s mate Adam Mabane, lieutenant-governor Hector Theophilus Cramahé (the son of Huguenot emigres to

Dublin), and a group of seigneurs that included Saint-Luc, the council party immediately protested their exclusion from the halls of power. We “think it our indispensible duty to communicate to you our sense of the method lately adopted of calling together only a part of the Council,” they wrote in a formal protest to Carleton on October 13, 1766, for the

“bad consequences which may arise from [this] Practice are many fold.”40 The “many

Difficulties which for Two Years we had to encounter in a new Establishment for a

Province under very peculiar circumstances,” they insisted, “perhaps entitle us to some

Reguard.”41 The “Deference which we feel for every Manifestation of the Will of our

Sovereign has prevented us from objecting,” they concluded, but “it is to be presumed” that “there is no Intention to deprive Us either of our Right to Precedence, or to a Seat in

Council.”42 Carleton replied by asserting his own prerogative as governor to seek counsel wherever he so desired, declaring that he would “call together such Counsellors as I shall

38 “Instructions to Governor Murray,” in Adam Shortt and Arthur George Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, 2 vols. (Ottawa: Printed by J. De L. Taché, 1918), 1:135. 39 For the activities of the governor’s council from its inception in 1764 to its conclusion in 1791, see “Ordinances and related legislative records of the Council, 1764-1775 and Legislative Council, 1775- 1791,” RG14-A1, RG4-B6, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (LAC). 40 “Remonstrance of Members of Council, October 13, 1766,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:193. 41 “Remonstrance of Members of Council, October 13, 1766,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:193. 42 “Remonstrance of Members of Council, October 13, 1766,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:194.

249 think best qualified to give me Information.”43 As assertions went, it did not bode well for the privileges of the council party. But, as time went on and Carleton began to flesh out his own plans for the province, the balance of power shifted once more in their favor.

The vagaries of the governor’s favor only intensified the efforts of the assembly party to achieve their aims, efforts that resulted in a flurry of petitions to the metropole in favor of the establishment of an elected legislature for the province. In one such petition, the proponents of an assembly insisted that the creation of such a body would “strengthen the hands of Government, give encouragement and protection to Agriculture and

Commerce,” and instill in “your new subjects” a “due conformity and attachment to the

British Laws and Constitution.”44 In another, they insisted that it would “create Harmony and good Understanding between your Majesty's new and old Subjects.”45 In still another they asserted that the Quebec was “at this Time perfectly mature for the Reception” of an assembly, which would “give much more Satisfaction to the People” and “be better able, than a Governor and Council, to make Laws Ordinances and Statutes suitable to their own Emergencies.”46 Only through the establishment of an assembly, these petitions declared, would the British conquest of Quebec be complete. Without one the empire could never hope to rule its Francophone subjects, who (according to the petitioners) overwhelmingly favored an assembly over a council despite the fact that their Catholic faith would prevent them from voting for that body’s members.47

43 “Governor Carleton’s Reply,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:194. 44 “Petition for a General Assembly, 1770” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:291. 45 “Petition to the King, 1773,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:348. 46 “Memorial from Quebec to Lord Dartmouth, 1774,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:350. 47 For a further example of this argumentation, see Francis Maseres, The Canadian Freeholder: In Two Dialogues between an Englishman and a Frenchman, Settled in Canada (London: B. White, 1777-1779), The Society of the Cincinnati Library (324.273 M396), Washington, D.C. (SOC).

250 The council party responded with its own petitions. In one, they sought to remind the king of the “importance to their interests” that they be “governed according to the

Laws Customs and regulations under which they were born.”48 In another, they warned that though assemblies might be “wisely suited to the regulation of the mother-country for which they were made” they “could not be blended and applied to our customs without totally overturning our fortunes.”49 Yet another contended that Quebec was “not in a condition to admit of a general assembly” and the petitioners were “therefore of opinion that a council” would be a “much fitter instrument of government for the province.”50 According to the coalition favoring governance by council, then, the establishment of an assembly would simply be too innovative for Britain’s Francophone subjects in Quebec. Such a major shift in the governing systems could destroy lives and fortunes and thus alienate the Quebecois to British rule. It was a position that the council party held to firmly as the decade following the conquest progressed.

As it turned out, it was also a position which they were willing to defend by whatever means they deemed necessary, including violence. After Pierre du Calvet complained of council party supporter John Fraser’s handling of a lawsuit as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, for example, the Scotsman retaliated with an escalating series of harassments and assaults. On June 29, 1771, Fraser called the merchant out of his Montreal home, “seized him by the collar with his left hand with great violence,”

“brandished in his right hand a little cane” with a “leaden ball in the top,” and

48 “Petition for the Restoration of French Law and Custom, 1770,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:294. 49 “Petition of French Subjects, 1773,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:356. 50 “A Memorial of the Foregoing French Petitioners in Support of Their Petition, 1773,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 1:359.

251 “endeavoured to give Mr. Du Calvet a blow on the head” with it.51 Fraser was later rumored to have said that “Mr. Walker of Montreal, has had his ears cut off” and Calvet would “have his tongue cut out.”52 While the merchant ultimately remained in possession of his tongue, the same could not be said of his sanguinity. In the years to follow Calvet dealt with the petty harassments of British soldiers acting at Fraser’s behest and the realization that he “never could succeed in any of the suits he instituted in the Court of

Common Pleas” because “Mr. Fraser’s friends became his enemies as well.”53 If threats of violence failed, it seemed, the council party was more than willing to bring its political clout to bear against the proponents of assembly.

The members of the assembly party proved no less willing to employ less than savory means of retaliation against their enemies. When the men he accused of assaulting him in 1764 were acquitted, Thomas Walker convinced an ex-soldier named George

McGovock lodging at his home two years later to accuse a new group of attackers. This time, the slate of defendants was a veritable who’s who of council party affiliates:

Captain Daniel Disney, Lieutenant Simon Evans, John Fraser, the merchant Joseph

Howard, Saint-Luc, and his son-in-law John Campbell. Wielding his political connections like a cudgel, Walker convinced Chief Justice Wiliam Hey to refuse bail to the accused. When the matter proceeded to trial in the spring of the following year, the jury threw Saint-Luc’s charges out of court. Daniel Disney, next on the docket, was acquitted despite Francis Maseres’ impassioned declaration as prosecutor that he was responsible for “outrageous Violations of the Public Peace and Order” in “Revenge for”

51 Calvet, Case, 51. 52 Calvet, Case, 54. 53 Calvet, Case, 55-56.

252 actions committed by Walker in support of the “Laws and Liberties of his Country.”54

Realizing the remaining defendants would most likely be similarly acquitted, Walker chose not to pursue further criminal charges. The council party had achieved a signal victory.

They achieved another with the passage of the Quebec Act in 1774, a piece of legislation that more than anything represented the culmination of a decade of political agitation by the members of their coalition. Firmly allied to the council party by the time

Parliament chose to debate the nature of Quebec’s future governance, Guy Carleton lobbied tirelessly on behalf of their vision for the province, believing that in doing so he furthered his own concept of how best to secure Quebecois loyalties to the empire. When asked in Parliament by Prime Minister Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, if the

Quebecois would “greatly prefer a government by the governor and legislative council”

Carleton testified with an emphatic “no doubt.”55 Asked to elaborate, Carleton claimed that when he “put the question to several of the Canadians” they told him “assemblies had drawn upon the other colonies so much distress” that “they wished never to have one of any kind whatever.”56 It was a clever ploy in the era of the Boston Tea Party. Six months earlier, Parliament had passed the legislative slate asserting its authority over the

North American colonies that came to be known as the “Intolerable Acts.” As Carleton and his allies in the council party posed the issue, the Quebecois were loyal subjects of the empire who sought to avoid the unrest of their neighbors to the south and would only prove troublesome if their political opponents had their way.

54 Daniel Disney, The Trial of Daniel Disney (Quebec: Printed by Brown & Gilmore, 1767), 7. 55 Cavendish, 106. 56 Cavendish, 106.

253 Testifying on behalf of the assembly party the same day, meanwhile, Francis

Maseres insisted that the “great body of the Canadians, with the exception perhaps of an hundredth part of the whole, would be very well satisfied with the establishment” of an assembly.57 “Notwithstanding the ill conduct of certain assemblies in North America,” he insisted, the Quebecois would hold firm to that preference and “keep in view an assembly” for the foreseeable future.58 Maseres’ testimony painted popular opinion in

Quebec in colors that diverged starkly from those of the governor. The assembly party wasn’t going anywhere, he made clear to Parliament, and the vast majority of Quebec’s

Francophone inhabitants stood behind them. Ultimately, his assertions fell on deaf ears.

British leaders had little desire to encourage colonial assemblies in the era of the taxation protests. Carleton’s arguments won the day. The Quebec Act that Parliament passed on

June 22 made provisions for Carleton to govern with the “Advice and Consent of the legislative Council.”59 It made no allowance for an assembly.

The assembly party made their dissatisfaction with the new legislation in dramatic fashion on the day the Quebec Act went into effect, May 1, 1775. The residents of

Montreal awoke that morning to find their public bust of King George III had been disfigured in the night. According to Francis Maseres, the vandals had painted the king’s bust black, “hung a cross at the end of it,” “ornamented [it] with a mitre and a string of beads,” and arranged a sign underneath it in French that read “this is the Pope of Canada and the Fool of England.”60 Witnessing the marred face of the king less than two weeks

57 Cavendish, 124. 58 Cavendish, 132. 59 “The Quebec Act, 1774,” Solon.org, accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/PreConfederation/qa_1774.html. 60 Francis Maseres, Additional Papers Concerning the Province of Quebeck (London: Sold by W. White ..., 1776), 155.

254 after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the many assembly party supporters in

Montreal who hailed from the virulently anti-Catholic colonies to the south almost certainly viewed the act more positively. Like many in the lower thirteen colonies these individuals lumped the Quebec Act in with the “Intolerable Acts” of the previous year, part of a larger ministerial conspiracy to rob Britain’s colonists of their perceived rights by imposing a more autocratic, Catholic-style regime in the vein of Charles I or James II.

Thomas Walker was by far the most outspoken of the assembly party in this regard, engaging in a number of public disputes in which he adamantly maintained that the Quebec Act was evidence of the metropole’s intention to oppress the colonists of

North America. In one such incident, recorded by Francis Maseres, the Montreal merchant vigorously rejected the assertion of René-Ovide Hertel de Rouville (one of the first two seigneurs named as a judge under the Quebec Act) that the “King is master” and

“his will must always be complied with.”61 “It might be so” for Rouville “as he eat of his

Majesty’s bread,” Walker declared, but “I deny that the King is my master” and would only do otherwise if “I receive[e] pay from him.”62 His words were laden with symbolism, drawing comparisons to the Catholic distribution of bread at communion and hinting at a certain level of corruption by implying that Rouville’s loyalty to the Crown had been bought. His words also indicated his enthusiastic embrace of the belief that a ministerial conspiracy was afoot, an indication confirmed by reports that he had declared to a Catholic priest in Montreal that “bit by bit He and others would see through the

Designs of the Ministry, whose object was to deprive them of their Rights and

61 Maseres, Additional Papers, 84. 62 Maseres, Additional Papers, 85.

255 Property.”63 Whether Walker himself was the author of the vandalism of the king’s bust, he clearly would have eagerly endorsed the central message that George III was an instrument of Catholic tyranny bent on robbing British colonists of their rights.

Supporters of the council party seem to have taken a slightly different message away from the act of vandalism, however, describing the incident in intriguingly divergent terms from those used by Maseres. According to reports delivered to Governor

Carleton and the seigneurial memoirist Simon Sanguinet, the string around the bust’s neck had been hung with potatoes rather than beads.64 The difference is revealing. Beads can be construed as a simple reference to the rosary, another hint at the supposed Catholic tyranny of the king. As Redcliffe Salaman notes, however, while potatoes were after their introduction to Europe seen as a luxury food, by the mid-eighteenth century they were becoming more and more of a dietary staple for the working poor and conversely less of one for the aristocracy.65 The use of potatoes in the vandalism of the king’s bust thus may have carried connotations of social inversion, implying for council party supporters that their political enemies meant to upend the class hierarchy that served as the foundation of the lives and power of Quebec’s seigneurs and their allies. The council party supporter and Trois-Rivières notary Jean-Baptiste Badeaux said it most succinctly in his journal from the period: he believed his enemies wished “to make the king a slave and the slave a

63 “Paper of Intelligence from Montreal, April 10, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:139. 64 “Extract of a Letter from Montreal, May 1, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:139; Simon Sanguinet, “Le Témoin Oculaire,” in Hospice Anthelme Jean Baptiste Verreau, ed., Invasion Du Canada (Montréal: Senécal, 1873), 24. 65 See “The Eighteenth Century,” in Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 456-517.

256 king.”66 The opponents of the council thus threatened, in the eyes of someone like

Badeaux, nothing less than to turn the entire world upside down.

Still, according to Sanguinet’s memoir, it was a collective “Canadians” who were

“indignant and mortified by such an insult” to their sovereign, not just the Quebecois elite. Based on a comparison with other contemporary sources, however, Sanguinet’s

“Canadians” were most likely other seigneurs rather than habitants.67 Reports from

Montreal mentioned that seigneur François-Marie Picoté de Belestre (recently named to the new council) expressed outrage over the vandalism but mentions no specific examples of similar outrage expressed by members of the lower classes.68 Maseres similarly includes the example of Belestre but none from the lower classes.69 Even

Sanguinet fails to move beyond the tale of Belestre in his depiction of the Quebecois reaction to the incident.70 Still, if there was no outrage to be had among the lower classes,

Belestre had more than enough to spare.

After the governor offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of the vandals, Belestre offered an additional sum out of his own funds declaring “that they deserved to be hanged, and, if they were in France, would be so.”71 A young merchant named Salisbury Franks then stepped to the front of the crowd to assert that “in England men are not hanged for such small offenses.”72 Belestre in return offered the rejoinder

66 “Badeaux Journal,” in Mark R. Anderson, ed., The Invasion of Canada by the Americans 1775-1776: As Told through Jean-Baptiste Badeaux's Three Rivers Journal and New York Captain 's Letters, trans. Teresa L. Meadows (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), 50. 67 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 24. 68 “Extrarct of a Letter from Montreal, May 4, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:139. 69 Maseres, Additional Papers, 155-69. 70 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 24. 71 Maseres, Additional Papers, 156. 72 Maseres, Additional Papers, 156.

257 that Franks was a “giddy headed insolent Spark.”73 The two quickly came to blows, the fight ending with Franks knocking Belestre unconscious with a jab to the right eye.

Afterwards, Belestre convinced his council party allies John Fraser and René-Ovide

Hertel de Rouville to arrest Franks. Hoping to both dispel the current unrest surrounding

Franks’ arrest and clamp down on any further unrest prompted by the institution of the

Quebec Act, Carleton both ordered the young merchant’s release and declared martial law. Within hours of the legislation’s implementation, the assembly party had effectively ensured that the governance of the province would be plunged into turmoil.

As it turned out, however, the council party was no less willing to interfere with

Carleton’s ability to govern if it meant protecting the prerogatives of its members.

Supporters of the council had long and strenuously opposed the use of jury trials over the course of the preceding decade. According to Carleton’s own testimony during the

Quebec Act debates, that opposition was rooted in their preference to not have “matters of law decided by tailors and shoemakers, mixed up with respectable gentlemen.”74

Again the issue was one of class, the council party defending its prerogatives as members of a presumably higher social order. Led by Saint-Luc, the supporters of the council party who were actually members of the new council refused over the course of multiple meetings in their first session since the Quebec Act’s implementation to pass any ordinances if Carleton continued in his expressed desire to compromise with the assembly party over the issue of juries.75 Carleton responded by disbanding the council in

73 “Extract of a Letter from Montreal, May 4, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 1:139. 74 Henry Cavendish, Debates of the House of Commons in the Year 1774, on the Bill for Making More Effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec, J. Wright, ed. (London: Ridgway, Piccadilly, 1839), 102. 75 “Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, October 1, 1775” in Peter Force, ed., American Archives . . ., 4th series (Washington: M. St. Clair Clarke, 1837-1853), 3:924-925. See also “Quebec Legislative Council Journal D,” RG1-E1, R10808-24-5-E, Box 108, LAC, Ottawa, Ontario.

258 frustration and proceeded to Montreal, where he was informed the rebels had just begun a siege of Fort Saint-Jean.

The Rebel Invasion of 1775

In a letter written from Europe in March 1775 after traveling to London to advise

Carleton during the Quebec Act debates, Saint-Luc opined to fellow seigneur François

Baby that their class should “always remain neuter” from protests against the ministry and “thankful for the favors of the government.”76 While Saint-Luc’s seigneurial compatriots took his advice to heart, it seems their tenants very much did not. Indeed, according to Jean-Baptiste Badeaux, as Carleton journeyed toward Montreal after disbanding his council he “had the discomfort of seeing that the more he advanced upriver, the more he found the habitants opposed to his designs.”77 It was no doubt a dispiriting indication of the habitants’ relative unwillingness to defend the interests of the

British Empire after living for over ten years under its rule.

That unwillingness showed no signs of lessening over time. Indeed, the governor and his supporters in Montreal endeavored strenuously to rouse the habitants from their supposed torpor but to no avail. Badeaux himself took park in one such effort. On

October 8, he travelled with Charles-Antoine Godefroy de Tonnancour (son of the seigneur Louis-Joseph) to the parish of Nicolet. When they arrived, the two told their habitant audience that “we had no intention of giving them orders” because “we had no power to do so” but after “many debates back and forth” managed to convince ten to volunteer to join the militia gathering under Carleton at Montreal.78 Others took a more

76 “Luc de la Corne to François Baby, March 20, 1775,” in Gaspé Philippe Aubert de, Cameron of Lochiel (The Canadians of Old) (Toronto, ON: Copp, Clark, 1905), 328. 77 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 56. 78 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 74.

259 hardline approach to such recruiting drives. In a passage of his memoir, Simon Sanguinet describes Saint-Luc’s nephew (referred to as Saint-Luc the Younger) threatening the residents of Terrebonne with imprisonment after “all the assembled inhabitants showed reluctance to join a militia.”79 “His zeal pushed him so far,” Sanguinet recounted, “that he spoke in a masterly tone and knocked. two or three residents” before setting “off in anger to bring his complaints to the General.”80 The habitants responded by arming themselves in opposition to Saint-Luc the Younger’s ends, upon which Carleton chastised the young seigneur and dispatched a British officer to apologize to the inhabitants of Terrrebonne.

The willingness of the habitants at Terrebonne to resist his directives with force no doubt alarmed Carleton considerably, especially when it became apparent that

Terrebonne was by no means alone in this regard. According to the notary Badeaux,

Captain Merlet of the parish militia of Chicot arrested multiple seigneurs during their travels across the region on Carleton’s behalf and subjected them to public humiliation.

One such individual, a Monsieur Leproust, informed Merlet that was an “officer of the

King,” to which the Chicot captain responded “well then” you can “get the hell out of here.”81 Like the residents of Terrebonne, then, the habitants of Chicot had no intention of receiving Crown’s representatives peaceably or responding favorably to their orders. It was yet another example of the habitants’ widespread determination to resist efforts to recruit them into military service. They had learned well the lessons of Pontiac’s War and, whether they favored the rebellion or not, obviously had little desire to serve in

79 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 38. 80 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 39. 81 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 74.

260 defense of Britain’s imperial aims. As more and more parishes refused like Terrebonne and Chicot to join Carleton in Montreal, his alarm would have grown only more urgent.

While episodes like those at Terrebonne and Chicot were inauspicious, what was certainly the most alarming to the governor was the fact that the habitants seemed not just reluctant to muster for the militia but open to entertaining the entreaties of the rebels.

As Sanguinet told it, the habitants that Saint-Luc the Younger confronted at Terrebonne refused to follow the young seigneur to Montreal “because one of them had read to them the letter of Congress dated October 26, 1774” inviting the Quebecois to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress.82 Merlet and the Chicot militia, meanwhile, only allowed Badeaux to travel through their parish after learning the notary journeyed with a message for the rebel General Richard Montgomery.83

The parish that had by far gone the furthest in that direction, however, was

Chambly, where the assembly party supporter James Livingston had issued a declaration to the habitants on September 16 urging them to “maintain a fraternal friendship” with the rebels and “come as a militia to join” them in their invasion of the province.84

According to Badeaux, the habitants of Chambly responded so enthusiastically to

Livington’s request that not only did they muster out to join him in the hundreds but encouraged the other parishes of the region in their resistance to Carleton’s recruitment efforts. The “Chamblies parishes having sided with the ‘Bostonians,’” he wrote in his journal entry for September 8, “had sown the idea in all the other parishes to not take up arms against the ‘Bostonians’” because “those people had come to draw us out of

82 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 38. 83 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 83. 84 “James Livingston to the Captains of Parishes, September 16, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:78.

261 oppression.”85 As a result, he continued, “nearly all of the Three Rivers District refused to march.”86 By all indications, it seemed, the area’s habitants were on the edge of declaring for the rebels (if, like those of Chambly, they had not already).

Still, while many parishes seemed close to the edge, the habitants of Chambly were by far the most active militarily and eventually came to form the core of

Livingston’s 1st Canadian Regiment. Their earliest major engagement of the campaign came at the Battle of Longue-Pointe on September 25, a spectacularly embarrassing defeat for the rebels commanded by Colonel Ethan Allen. Since his capture of Fort

Ticonderoga on May 10, Allen had been advocating tenaciously for an attack on

Montreal. His first effort in that direction was a raid on Fort Saint-Jean just a short time after his capture of Ticonderoga. Benedict Arnold, Allen’s partner in the Ticonderoga attack, had recently set off to raid the fort. Not to be outdone, Allen set off with 100

Green Mountain Boys to take the fort wholesale, forgot to pack provisions for the journey, collapsed in exhaustion a short distance from his destination, and was awoken and run off by a few volleys of grapeshot. The attempt, despite its failure, made Allen a household name in the province of Quebec.

Four months later, Allen sought to further augment his fame in the north by expanding upon the directive of General Richard Montgomery to recruit among the habitants of the region by planning an attack on Montreal instead. By the time he reached

Longueuil where he intended to cross the St. Lawrence and envelop the town in conjunction with a force under Major John Brown crossing at La Prairie, Allen had recruited somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 habitants from Chambly. The bulk of

85 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 56. 86 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 56.

262 this number he stationed with Brown, while eighty remained with him. On the morning of

September 25, he crossed from Longueuil to Longue-Pointe, confronted a force under

Carleton composed chiefly of the limited Quebecois recruits the governor had managed to muster, and was promptly captured along with thirty of his men. As Badeaux put it, the

“nobility and bourgeoisie” had fought with “unparalleled boldness” and “repelled him most vigorously.”87 Allen’s own recruits from Chambly had broken almost instantly. The rest, under Major Brown, never even crossed the river. Evidently there were limits to even the Chambly habitants’ attachment to the rebel cause.

The Battle of Longue-Pointe had two main outcomes. For one, it convinced

Carleton to order the arrest of Thomas Walker. After the governor had declared martial law following the vandalism of the king’s bust, Walker had chosen to leave the city of

Montreal for his property at L’Assomption. From there he began, like James Livingston, to actively encourage the area’s habitants to support the rebels. When Ethan Allen discovered that Brown would not be crossing the St. Lawrence, he had called upon

Walker for assistance. In Allen’s own words, Walker had “agreeably to my desire, exerted himself, and had raised number of men for my assistance.”88 Unfortunately for the Vermont colonel, Walker was unable to reach his position in time and ultimately

“disbanded them” after “hearing of my misfortune” in being captured.89 Learning of the merchant’s complicity with Allen’s plans, Carleton sent a party of British regulars and forty Quebecois militiamen to seize Walker at his home in L’Assomption. The merchant held his would-be captors off at gunpoint for some time before they resorted to setting his

87 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 56. 88 Ethan Allen, A Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen's Captivity and Treatment by the British from 1775 to 1778 (Burlington, VT: C. Goodrich, 1846), 24. 89 Allen, Narrative, 24.

263 house ablaze and pulling him forcibly through a window along with his wife. Allen and his Chambly recruits had been clapped in irons and jailed in the holds of several commandeered ships on the Montreal wharf. Thomas Walker joined them shortly after their arrival.

The second outcome of the Battle of Longue-Pointe was its role as a catalyst for

British recruitment among the habitants. While the Quebecois lower classes remained largely neutral or rebel-leaning, Carleton managed to muster upwards of a thousand men in the weeks following the battle. The attack on Montreal had, it seemed, prompted those among the habitants who favored British rule but kept silent under pressure from their more outspoken neighbors to finally show their true colors. The new recruits in Montreal quickly found themselves at loggerheads with the governor, however, who refused to attack the rebel forces besieging Fort Saint-Jean. According to Simon Sanguinet, the habitants of Varennes were the first to bring their concerns to Carleton, telling him the rebels “returned to their parishes every day” and would, they feared, “burn their houses” and “mistreat their wives and their children.”90 Carleton responded that “he did not want to lose people” and the “time had not yet come to cross” the St. Lawrence and attack the rebels, a stance he maintained for quite some time.91 “Nothing could determine the

General to cross,” Sanguinet continued, and “after three weeks” the habitants “began to get bored in Montreal.”92 So, in Sanguinet’s words, “many asked the General to go to see their families” and others “left without asking.”93 With much of his force scattering back to their homes by the end of October, Carleton could not afford to wait any longer. He

90 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 55-56. 91 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 56. 92 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 56. 93 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 58-59.

264 sent orders to Scottish Colonel Allan Maclean at Quebec to bring as many men down to join an attack on the rebels at Saint-Jean as quickly as possible.

Carleton put his plans in motion on October 30, crossing the St. Lawrence at

Longueuil with a 1000-man force composed primarily of Quebecois militia, Indians, and

Highlanders while Maclean marched from Sorel with almost six hundred more Quebecois and Highlanders. Saint-Luc was among those leading the men under Carleton landing at

Longueuil. The Quebecois translator and Indian agent Claude-Nicolas-Guillaume de

Lorimier documents Saint-Luc’s involvement in the episode in his memoir of the period.

According to him, just as Lorimier had finished arranging his own men in bateaux for the crossing to Longueuil, he asked Saint-Luc what to do, “believing that he brought orders from the general.” The seigneur responded by “gesturing towards the Longueuil shore” and saying “there is where we must distinguish ourselves!”94 Believing Saint-Luc’s to be a general order, Lorimier ordered his men to reach the opposite shore and attack the rebels waiting there under Colonel . Saint-Luc’s orders turned out to be precipitate. Carleton had not yet ordered the rest of his force to cross. With the crossing in disarray, the rebels had time to solidify their defenses. Carleton ultimately ordered his small army to withdraw. Fort Saint-Jean was on its own.

The rebels immediately sought to turn Carleton’s misfortunes to their advantage.

In a letter written November 1 Richard Montgomery delivered news of the defeat at

Longueuil the commander of Fort Saint-Jean, Major Charles Preston, begging him to use the revelation as an opportunity to “learn how small your prospect of relief.”95 More

94 Claude-Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier, At War with the Americans: The Journal of Claude-Nicolas- Guillaume De Lorimier, ed. Peter Aichinger and Roch Tanguay (Victoria, B.C.: Press Porcepic, 1981), 39. 95 “Richard Montgomery to Charles Preston, November 1, 1775,” in Arthur G. Doughty, ed., Report of the Work of the Public Archives, for the Years 1914 and 1915 (Ottawa: J. de L Taché, 1916), 12-13.

265 tellingly, however, Montgomery ended his missive with a threat. “I will assemble the

Canadians” if you refuse to surrender, he warned, and “shall deem myself innocent of the melancholy consequences which may attend it!”96 It was not a threat Preston could afford to take lightly. The habitants of Chambly had taken the nearby outpost at less than two weeks earlier and then proceeded to aid in the siege of Fort Saint-Jean.

Regardless of whether or not the habitants aiding the rebels were actually ready or willing to participate in an assault, Montgomery and Preston believed they were. With his provisions running dangerously low and lacking the wherewithal to resupply, Preston took the rebel general at his word. The 536 British regulars and 79 Quebecois volunteers under Preston marched out of the fort behind him on November 3 and surrendered their arms. The way to Montreal was open.

Upon learning of Fort Saint-Jean surrender Carleton ordered a general withdrawal from Montreal, loading his men, political prisoners, and supplies into boats and sailing away toward Quebec. With the city now defenseless, a deputation under Pierre du Calvet capitulated to Montgomery on November 13. With Montreal in rebel hands the inhabitants of Trois-Riviéres chose to follow in Calvet’s footsteps, sending Jean-Baptiste

Badeaux and a Mr. Morriss to meet with Montgomery and offer their town’s surrender.

So widespread was the popular sentiment among the habitants in favor of the rebels at this point that they only made it to their destination and back by pretending to be rebels themselves. After setting off on November 18, the pair stopped for lunch at Pointe aux

Trembles two days later, where they “were taken for ‘Bostonians’ and were given many compliments and thanks for the fact that we had come there (so they said) to give them

96 “Richard Montgomery to Charles Preston, November 1, 1775,” in Doughty, ed., 13.

266 liberty.”97 After meeting with Montgomery that afternoon the two returned to Pointe aux

Trembles to spend the night, where they “were made very welcome” because “since we spoke English, they thought that we were ‘Bostonians’” and “nothing was too good for us.”98 They made it back to Trois-Riviéres the following day, safe and sound on the sufferance of rebel-leaning habitants.

Badeaux was not the only one who may have used such a deception to make their way through the province more safely. A popular account of Carleton’s trek from

Montreal to the city of Quebec maintains that the governor was forced to disguise himself as a habitant in order to reach his destination. One of the most famous versions of this account was published by the Quebec Mercury in 1814 and, although no contemporary sources appear to include the details mentioned by the Mercury, it was later corroborated by the son of the whaleboat captain who aided Carleton in his escape, Jean-Baptiste

Bouchette.99 According to this account, after sailing from Montreal on November 11

Carleton’s fleet found itself becalmed near Sorel the following day and then blocked by rebel cannon under Colonel James Easton three days later. To this point, the Mercury’s account concords with that of Carleton himself.100 It then diverges, however, in a key detail that Bouchette’s son Joseph seems to have believed was true. According to both him and the Mercury, the rest of Carleton’s journey was completed in the disguise of a habitant.

Loaded aboard Bouchette’s boat with a few of his supporters, Carleton arrived in

Trois-Riviéres on November 17 and promptly collapsed in exhaustion in the home of

97 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 83. 98 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 83. 99 Joseph Bouchette, The British Dominions in North America (London: Longman, 1832), 388. 100 “Guy Carleton to George Germain, November 20, 1775,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:133.

267 Louis-Joseph Godefroy de Tonnancour. Again, the Mercury’s account agrees in this narrative of events with a contemporary source, this time the journal of Jean-Baptiste

Badeaux, who was in Trois-Riviéres when the governor reached the town.101 But, once more, it diverges in the key detail of Carleton’s use of disguise, something Joseph

Bouchette holds as true. According to the Mercury’s account, rebel troops arrived in the town soon after Carleton fell asleep and entered Tonnancour’s home. Sneaking into

Carleton’s room, Bouchette roused the governor and informed him of the latest turn of events. As the Mercury told it, it was the “governor’s disguise” that “proved his preservation.”102 Feigning ignorance of English, Carleton spoke to the rebels in French and passed right through them. He arrived in the city of Quebec on November 20 without further incident. With the rebels so eager to secure the support of the habitants none had apparently dared to accost him further. If the story of Carleton’s habitant disguise is true, the fact that he resorted to such tactics is a telling indication of popular sentiment in the province (and Carleton’s awareness thereof).

Politicizing the Invasion

The supporters of the council and assembly parties almost immediately sought to make political hay out of the course of events that led to Montreal’s fall. When it became apparent that the bulk of the habitants would refuse to muster, seigneurial leaders in that city sought to convince Carleton the issue lay with recent innovations to the militia system. According to Simon Sanguinet’s memoir, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Templer of the 26th Regiment (who commanded in Montreal prior to the governor’s arrival) ordered

101 “Badeaux Journal,” in Anderson, ed., 83. 102 Bouchette, British Dominions, 390.

268 the militia formed by companies that would each “name its captain and its officers.”103

Officer elections were standard practice in Anglophone militias, but at variance with practices in Quebec where leadership was inherited by seigneurs down the generations.

So, when Carleton arrived and “found the people ill-disposed,” Sanguinet “told the

General that it was better in the present circumstances to restore the militias to the old footing” because “otherwise it would be difficult to get the Canadians to move.”104

Carleton took the seigneur’s advice, ordering the militias to be raised henceforth along

Quebecois lines.

Unfortunately for Sanguinet, the habitants quickly made their displeasure regarding the course reversal known. “The populace refused to join the militia,”

Sanguinet wrote in his memoir, “under the pretext that Colonel Templere had promised them” that “they would have the freedom to appoint their officers.”105 Eventually,

Carleton chose to relent and “sent orders into the countryside to restore the militia” to the mode adopted by Templer.106 When the habitants continued resisting the governor’s mustering orders Sanguinet interpreted it as evidence that he had been correct in his interpretation of affairs, writing that “if the militias would have stayed on the old foot” there “would have been much less difficulties.”107 Ultimately, the course of events appeared to prove him wrong. It was not the style of militia that kept the habitants from aiding in the defense of Quebec. They were simply unwilling.

103 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 31. 104 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 34. 105 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 37. 106 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 38. 107 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 38.

269 Other council party supporters had their own explanations for the habitants’ reluctance to muster. The lieutenant-governor Hector Theophilus Cramahé evidently believed the lion’s share of blame could be laid at the feet of his enemies in the assembly party. As a letter from Quebec on November 9 published by Francis Maseres related it,

Cramahé confronted assembly party supporter Zachary Macaulay after the fall of Fort

Saint-Jean and accused his political affiliates of suborning the loyalties of the habitants.

During their argument, the letter claimed, Cramahé declared “in great anger” that “it was our damn’d committees that had thrown the province in to its present state, and prevented the Canadians from taking arms.”108 Determined to clamp down on the supposed threat,

Cramahé prohibited all public meetings under the martial law ordinance issued by

Carleton. Carleton completed the process when he arrived in the capital on November 20.

His first action upon reaching the city was to expel anyone he deemed disloyal, among them many supporters of the assembly party. His experiences in Montreal had evidently convinced him that any challenge to his government’s authority could lead to its destruction.

Of course, proponents of an assembly had a drastically different interpretation of the events surrounding Montreal’s fall, an interpretation they spread far and wide in an effort to use the rebel invasion for their own political gains. According to Francis

Maseres’ correspondent in Quebec, the habitants had publicly declared that “their seigniors had no right to command their military service” and “would not take arms as a

Militia unless his Excellency [Carleton] would assure them on his honour, that he would use his utmost endeavours to get the Quebeck Bill repealed.”109 As further evidence of

108 Maseres, Additional Papers, 101. 109 Maseres, Additional Papers, 105-106.

270 popular dissatisfaction with the Quebec Act among the Quebecois, another of Maseres’ informants related a version of Saint-Luc the Younger’s confrontation with the habitants of Terrebonne that included details not mentioned by Simon Sanguinet. In this version the habitants of Terrebonne informed Saint-Luc’s nephew that they “did not look on themselves as Frenchmen in any respect” and thus were not beholden to the regulations that governed militia service before the conquest.110 When Carleton dispatched a British officer to apologize to the habitants of Terrebonne for Saint-Luc the Younger’s response to their resistance, Maseres’ informant continued, they told him that if the governor

“requires our services let him give us Englishmen to command us.”111 When the officer responded that there were no such individuals available, they responded by suggesting that their officers be “common soldiers.”112 The habitants would prefer anyone, the informant asserted, to an officer from the seigneurial class. As those of the assembly party would have it, then, the root of the issues facing the province during the rebel invasion could be found in the unpopularity of the Quebec Act.

While Maseres insisted that should the Quebec Act be repealed the habitants would become faithful servants of the empire, the rebels interpreted their actions during the campaign for Montreal as evidence that they were ready to embrace their cause.

There were certainly plenty of examples of habitants greeting the rebels’ presence in the province with enthusiasm. After arriving to Quebec with Benedict Arnold, for example,

Caleb Haskell recorded in his journal entry for November 8 that the “inhabitants have

110 Maseres, Additional Papers, 73. 111 Maseres, Additional Papers, 73-74. 112 Maseres, Additional Papers, 74.

271 been very kind to us since we have been among them.”113 Matthias Ogden of the 1st New

Jersey Regiment, meanwhile, recorded that the habitants “appeared glad to see us and welcomed us to Canada.”114 Future Secretary of War Henry Dearborn echoed Ogden’s account in his own journal of the campaign, writing that the “Canadians are Constantly

Coming to us” and “expressing the Greatest satisfaction at our coming into the

Country.”115 By far the most memorable episode comes from the journal of Dr. Isaac

Senter, however, who wrote in his entry for November 4 that an “old woman being acquainted from whence we came, immediately fell singing and dancing ‘Yankee

Doodle’ with the greatest air of good humour.”116 Everywhere the rebels turned, it seemed, there was a habitant eager to welcome them to the province.

So certain was he of the rebellion’s popularity in the province, in fact, that it appears Richard Montgomery hinged much of his plan for taking the capital upon it.

Indeed, according to Isaac Senter, prior to his December 31 assault on enemy defenses,

Montgomery “sent out into the villages round the city, to the Captains of the militia to immediately assemble to our assistance.”117 But, the “peasants, however friendly disposed,” Senter wrote with chagrin, thought it too precarious a juncture to shew themselves in that capacity, and those nigh rather retreated back into the country, than give any assistance.”118 The rebel general persisted in his plans despite the habitants’ reluctance to join him, offering the Quebecois volunteers under James Livingston a key

113 “Journal of Caleb Haskell,” in Kenneth Lewis Roberts, ed., March to Quebec (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947), 479. 114 Matthias Ogden, Journal of Mathias Ogden on the March to Quebec with Benedict Arnold, 1775 (Morristown, NJ: Washington Association of New Jersey, 1928), 3. 115 “Journal of Henry Dearborn,” in Roberts, ed., 143. 116 “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Roberts, ed., 222. 117 “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Roberts, ed., 235. 118 “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Roberts, ed., 235.

272 role in the attack by ordering them to conduct a feint against St. John’s Gate on the western wall. The feint was intended to draw defenders away from the main thrust of the assault under Montgomery, something that never happened because, as Senter put it,

Livingston’s regiment “made the best of their way off soon after the heavy fire began.”119

Orders to return were sent off after the retreating Quebecois but to no avail and, ultimately, they “assisted but little” in the attack.120 Many of the habitants might support the rebellion, it seemed, but few were willing to die for it.

That did not mean that the rebels were without hope of the Quebecois assisting them in another way, however. According to Simon Sanguinet, the rebels approaching under Benedict Arnold to attack a barricade on the northern end of the lower town at

Sault-au-Matelot heralded their arrival by crying “my friends” in French, “naming the name of several citizens from the city,” and asking “are you there?”121 The idea that

“there were several traitors in the city” made the “good citizens tremble,”122 Sanguinet wrote, but was ultimately ineffective in helping the rebels gain entrance to the capital.

Instead, as Captain Thomas Ainslie recorded in his journal of the siege, the Quebecois militia fighting for the British there “shew’d no kind of backwardness” and “stood to the last” when “they were in the greatest danger of being surrounded.”123 Eventually,

Arnold’s men were heard to call out “do not shoot any more, Canadians, because you are going to kill your friends.”124 Though the defenders initially believed the words to be a ruse, they gradually began to cease fire. When they had finally stopped, those of Arnold’s

119 “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Roberts, ed., 235. 120 “Journal of Isaac Senter,” in Roberts, ed., 235. 121 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 119. 122 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 119. 123 Thomas Ainslie, Canada Preserved; The Journal of Captain Thomas Ainslie, ed. Sheldon S. Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 37. 124 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 121.

273 men who remained surrendered. Quebecois support for the rebellion was, apparently, not nearly as widespread as rebel leaders had assumed.

The Rebel Occupation Chafes

Recognizing that fact in the wake of Montgomery’s failure to take the capital, rebel authorities moved quickly to clamp down on dissent in the province. Much of this activity occurred under the purview of General David Wooster, commander of the rebel occupation of Montreal since its fall. According to Simon Sanguinet, after learning of

Montgomery’s defeat, “Wooster immediately sent the major from the place of Montreal” with “twenty-five or thirty Bostonian soldiers” to “disarm those known for good royalists” and “send them prisoners to their colonies.”125 Many of the council party’s supporters were slated for exile to the lower thirteen colonies, among them Saint-Luc.

The inveterate champion of seigneurial authority and sometime collaborator of Governor

Carleton had been imprisoned by the rebels since shortly after Montreal’s surrender.

When Carleton had abandoned his fleet on the St. Lawrence and evaded the rebels on foot, Saint-Luc and a number of his other supporters had been left in the boats to surrender to James Easton. Afterwards, he had been held at Boucherville for some time before being transferred to La Prairie when rebel authorities in Montreal discovered he and his family had been storing arms and ammunition in readiness for an attempt to cut

“off the communication between Gen’ Montgomery' s army and our garrison, and at one stroke to destroy all the friends of the United Colonies.”126 When Wooster began making preparations to send his political prisoners south, Saint-Luc was singled out as especially

125 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 93. 126 “Extract of a Letter from an Officer in the Northern Army, December 2, 1775,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:157.

274 dangerous to the rebel cause. George Washington sent specific orders at the behest of the

Kahnawake leader Louis Cook to remove him from the northern province as quickly as possible.127

Wooster’s next move was to demand in February that anyone who received a commission from Carleton to serve as a militia officer surrender it to him for public destruction. According to Claude-Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier, the merchant and assembly party supporter James Price attempted to persuade “us militia officers [to] resign our [British] commissions and accept new ones bearing the signature of the

President of the [Continental] Congress” at a meeting with them on February 1.128 When an “individual named Loubet who ran a coffee house in Montreal” demanded that those present be allowed to “express our own opinions as citizens,” however, “Price ordered him taken away by the [American] soldiers who had been posted there to keep order.”129

The meeting’s attendees promptly sought to flee the premises, upon which Lorimier himself caught the rebels’ attention by declaring that “not one of these lousy Americans would ever lay a hand” on his commission.130 They then reported the translator’s words to Wooster, who called Lorimier into his presence and ordered him to “get ready to leave for New York in six days.”131 Lorimier never gave Wooster a chance to follow up on his threat. He fled the city instead, escaping to the protection of his friends among the St.

Lawrence Indians.

127 “Stephen Moylan to David Wooster, February 27, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 4:1515. 128 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 43. 129 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 43-44. 130 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 44. 131 Lorimier, At War with the Americans, 44.

275 By then, Wooster had thoroughly alienated himself to the Quebecois inhabitants of Montreal. When he received orders to procced to the city of Quebec and assume command of the siege of the capital in March, he soon proved adept at alienating local sensibilities no matter where he went. Despite the rebels’ failure to take the capital on

December 31, the habitants living in the environs of the city of Quebec had continued to demonstrate their willingness to support the invaders in any way except militarily. Within a week of Wooster’s arrival at the city of Quebec on March 20, the general had managed to convince the local habitants that a military solution was indeed necessary. On the same day that Wooster arrived on the scene, Carleton had issued orders to the seigneur Louis

Liénard de Beaujeu de Villemonde to attempt to recruit a relief force from the habitants living along the southern shore of the St. Lawrence. Under different circumstances, the orders may have come to naught. With Wooster’s heavy hand to propel the habitants into his arms, Beaujeu managed to gather some 350 men by March 25. After his advance guard was surrounded and captured by the rebels in the Battle of Saint-Pierre, Beaujeu chose to “discharge his little army and hide himself for fear of being made prisoner.”132

Despite the failure of Beaujeu’s relief attempt, the capital’s garrison still had reason to hope. Popular opinion was obviously turning against the rebels.

It was the new commander at Montreal since Wooster’s departure, Colonel Moses

Hazen, who eventually put the shift into words for rebel leaders outside Quebec. Born in

Massachusetts and appointed to command a company of rangers during the British conquest of the province fifteen years earlier, Hazen was a relative newcomer to politics.

He had spent much of his time since speculating in land development near Saint-Jean and

132 “Témoin Oculaire,” in Verreau, ed., 106.

276 even sought to discourage the rebels from invading the province in 1775 for fear that it would interfere with his investments. After Benedict Arnold’s raid on Fort Saint-Jean in

May 1775, the British had expanded the outpost’s defenses to include Hazen’s home and during the rebel siege in October both armies had sought to arrest him on suspicion of collaborating with their enemy. The British had eventually won out, holding Hazen for a time at Saint-Jean before forwarding him on to Montreal under the care of Claude-

Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier. Hazen remained imprisoned until being freed along with

Thomas Walker by James Easton when he captured Guy Carleton’s escape fleet on the

St. Lawrence in November 1775. When Montgomery failed to take the capital on

December 31, it was Hazen who David Wooster dispatched to inform Congressional leaders in Philadelphia. Once there, he had reluctantly accepted a commission to command the and then returned to Quebec in search of recruits for his new unit.

It was Hazen’s frustrations in fulfilling the quotas for that unit that eventually convinced him the Quebecois had turned firmly against the rebel cause. “Recruiting goes on slow in this part of Canada,” he wrote in exasperation to his second-in-command

Lieutenant Colonel on March 10, doubting that anything would “make a change more favorable for recruiting in this country.”133 “I hope,” he added, “that you have better success at and about Quebec.”134 Wooster’s arrival at the capital ensured that

Antill did not and, by the beginning of the following month, Hazen had given up all expectation that the habitants would continue to support the rebellion.

133 “ to Edward Antill, March 10, 1776,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:145-146. 134 “Moses Hazen to Edward Antill, March 10, 1776,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:145.

277 He informed Philip Schuyler of his conclusions in a letter on April 1. The

“peasantry in general have been ill used” by the Continental Army, he asserted,

“dragooned, with the point of the bayonet, to furnish” supplies for our troops and “their labour and property lost” without any real hope of repayment.135 “They look upon” the

“Congress and the United Colonies as bankrupt” and “have not seen sufficient force in the country to protect them,” he concluded, both of which “furnish very strong arguments to be made use of by our enemies.”136 It was on the strength of Hazen’s assertions that

Schuyler was finally able to convince Congressional leaders to dispatch a committee to investigate affairs in the northern province. When that committee arrived a month later, it was also Hazen’s assertions that eventually served as the foundation of its reports on

Quebecois attitudes toward the rebellion. Ultimately, a month after that, it was Hazen’s further assurances to General John Sullivan that he could “not rely on any real assistance from the Canadians” that contributed to the decision to retreat from Quebec entirely.137

Just as the affiliations of the region’s Indians had pushed the rebels out of the north, so too did those of the Quebecois.

The Saratoga Campaign

The rebels were not the only ones who grappled with the elusive support of the habitants and its impact on military strategy that year. With the Continental Army’s troops firmly ejected from the province Britain’s military leaders in Quebec turned their eyes on the long-planned invasion of the Hudson River Valley, at which time they found themselves with many of the same issues they had faced during the defense of Montreal.

135 “Moses Hazen to Philip Schuyler, April 1, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 5:752. 136 “Moses Hazen to Philip Schuyler, April 1, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 5:752. 137 “Moses Hazen to John Sullivan, June 13, 1776,” in Force, ed., 4th Series, 6:1105.

278 As commander of that invasion, General John Burgoyne intended the habitants to play a central role. In his memorandum to Secretary of State for the American Department

George Germain explaining his planned conduct of the campaign, Burgoyne insisted that

“Canada will be found to contribute to the full what the Country can afford.”138 “It will be necessary to have Chains of Canadian Patroles and posts in the woods behind the

Regulars,” he asserted, “to intercept the communications between the Enemy and the ill- affected in Canada, to prevent desertion and procure intelligence, and for many other services that will be obvious for keeping the Country quiet.”139 A “still greater call upon the Canadians,” he went on “will be for the Transport of all provisions, Artillery, Stores and Baggage of the Army.”140 All this, he estimated, “will probably require 2000

Men.”141 Without them, he made clear, the essential functions of his growing army would be decidedly hampered. Valuable regular soldiers would be required in their place to protect his rear and haul supplies. Without the Quebecois, he believed, the British Army would be fighting with one arm tied behind its back.

As Burgoyne would eventually learn, however, asking for assistance from the

Quebecois was an entirely different matter from that of actually getting it. By the spring of 1777, just months before his invasion was slated to begin, the general had more or less come to the conclusion that his goals for the Quebecois would never be met. “I cannot speak” with “so much confidence” of the “assistance I am to look for from the

138 “Memorandum & Observations Related to the Sergice in Canada, Submitted to Lord George Germain, n.d.,” in John Burgoyne, Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign: His Papers, ed. Douglas Cubbison (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 176. 139 “Memorandum & Observations Related to the Sergice in Canada, Submitted to Lord George Germain, n.d,” in Cubbison, ed., 176. 140 “Memorandum & Observations Related to the Sergice in Canada, Submitted to Lord George Germain, n.d,” in Cubbison, ed., 176. 141 “Memorandum & Observations Related to the Sergice in Canada, Submitted to Lord George Germain, n.d,” in Cubbison, ed., 176.

279 Canadians,” he wrote to George Germain on May 14, because the “only Corps yet instituted” are “officered by Seigneurs of the country” who “have not been able to engage many volunteers.”142 “Those which I have yet seen afford no promise of use in arms,” he continued, and are “awkward, ignorant, disinclined to service” and “spiritless.”143 It was an evaluation of Quebecois military capacity that could just as easily have been written by John Montresor over a decade earlier.

Unlike his predecessor, however, Burgoyne sought to offer some explanation for it. In words directly echoing the arguments of Francis Maseres in publications released only a year before, Burgoyne opined that the problem could be traced “principally to the unpopularity of the Seigneurs.”144 Unfortunately for him, he had little control over the system used to recruit or organize the Quebecois. That power lay with Guy Carleton, who had passed a militia ordinance through his council the previous March mandating that the province’s militias be led by “officers appointed by his excellency the captain general or governor in chief” according to pre-conquest practice.145 Burgoyne would have to satisfy himself with whatever Carleton might be able to obtain for him along those lines.

Of course, Burgoyne soon found he would have difficulty retaining even those habitants Carleton managed to send to him, a problem he lay squarely at the feet of the governor’s new militia ordinance. One “Company of Canadians lost twenty men by desertion,” he wrote to Carleton in frustration on May 26, while another lost “ten the same night.”146 The “only punishment” to “which deserters are exposed by the present

142 “John Burgoyne to George Germain, May 14, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:213. 143 “John Burgoyne to George Germain, May 14, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:213. 144 “John Burgoyne to George Germain, May 14, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:213. 145 “Ordinance for Regulating the Militia of the Province of Quebec,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:204. 146 “John Burgoyne to Guy Carleton, May 26, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:218.

280 Ordinance is being turned out of the Militia,” he continued, and “it is for your

Excellency’s judgment to decree some further remedy for this evil.”147 Carleton declined

Burgoyne’s advice in a response three days later, claiming that under the Quebec Act any more severe measures would require a “greater Degree of Coercion, than our limited

Powers permit us to exercise.”148 So, Burgoyne’s Quebecois contingent continued to drain away in dribs and drabs as his invasion was set in motion.

By the time he reached the River Bouquet, he had given up all hope of their playing any further role in the campaign. The “assistance of Canadians beyond the limits of the Province” of Quebec “will be little or nothing,” he complained in a report to

George Germain on June 22, for “their numbers are daily dwindling by desertion.”149 By

October 5, with Burgoyne trapped by the rebels to the south, Brigadier General Henry

Watson Powell at Fort Ticonderoga was certain that “very few” of the Quebecois would be among the prisoners if his commander surrendered, a “great many having deserted by a dozen at [a] time.”150 As it turned out, he was not far off the mark. After requesting

2,000 habitants for his army, Burgoyne had set off with three companies of 150 men each.151 After he then negotiated terms of surrender with the rebels allowing the

Quebecois to return safely home rather than be taken as prisoners of war, his subordinate

Powell estimated that the proviso had impacted less than one hundred men.152 Such numbers gave Burgoyne the perfect excuse to avoid blame for his defeat by laying it at the feet of the Quebecois. The “Desertion or the timidity of the Canadians” was, in his

147 “John Burgoyne to Guy Carleton, May 26, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:218. 148 “Guy Carleton to John Burgoyne, May 29, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:219. 149 “John Burgoyne to George Germain, June 22, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:224. 150 “Henry Watson Powell to Guy Carleton, October 5, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:234. 151 John Burgoyne, A State of the Expedition from Canada: as Laid before the House of Commons (London: Printed for J. Almon, 1780), 7. 152 “Henry Watson Powell to Guy Carleton, October 19, 1777,” in Cruikshank, ed., 2:237.

281 estimation, among the chief reasons he had been defeated.153 Had the Quebecois simply adhered to their duties, he maintained, he might have stood some chance of success.

Fighting for a Second Invasion of Quebec

The large majority of rebel leaders were in accord with Burgoyne’s estimation at least of the relative willingness of the Quebecois to be serving in his army. As commander of the Continental Army at the British general’s surrender Horatio Gates assured the new President of the Continental Congress Henry Laurens that the enemy’s

Quebecois partisans had been coerced, an assurance Laurens promptly disseminated.154

Among the first of the rebels to recognize the strategic potential of such a perception was none other than Moses Hazen, whose 2nd Canadian Regiment (significantly augmented by recruits from the lower thirteen colonies) was stationed in Pennsylvania with George

Washington at the time. Believing the Quebecois once more chafed under the British yoke and might support a rebel invasion, Hazen offered his regiment to Gates in the event such a campaign took place. “I have it so much at Heart,” he wrote to Gates a week after

Burgoyne’s surrender, “that I shall not be easy untill I hear an Expedition to Canada is once more undertaken.”155 Seeing a second invasion of Quebec as an opportunity to drain resources away from Washington’s army and towards his own in the north Gates quickly took Hazen up on his suggestion, convincing the Marquis de Lafayette in turn to support him in his lobbying efforts for such a campaign with Congressional leaders.

153 “John Burgoyne to George Germain, December 25, 1777,” in Cubbison, ed., 321. 154 See “Henry Laurens to the Massachusetts Council, January 21, 1778,” vol. 8, Paul H. Smith, et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, 25 volumes (Washington: Library of Congress, 1976- 2000). 155 “Moses Hazen to Horatio Gates, October 26, 1777,” Horatio Gates Papers, reel 4, box VIII, doc. 141, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia.

282 Long after Lafayette, Gates, and most other rebel leaders had abandoned hope that that campaign would get off the ground, Hazen held firm in his conviction that it could and would succeed. Dispatched with his regiment to New York and appointed quartermaster for the expedition, Hazen was among the first rebel leaders to arrive in

Albany in preparation for the invasion. Despite the complaints of others upon their own arrival that the troops gathering there lacked the supplies necessary for the campaign

Hazen remained eager and optimistic, writing that he was “not under the least apprehensions” regarding the invasion and that his own men were “so warm for the expedition that they would consent to go almost naked into Canada.”156 It may have been an exaggeration, but it did speak to the longing of Hazen’s Quebecois soldiers to reconnect with friends and family still at home in the north. That longing almost certainly helped fuel their commander’s continued enthusiasm for the prospect of a second invasion despite the bleak outlook.

Indeed, even when such assurances proved inadequate to keep the Lafayette

Expedition afloat Hazen remained hopeful, insisting in letters to George Washington throughout the rest of the war that the Quebecois were ready and willing to embrace the rebellion. “Should we penetrate into Canada there would Scarcely a Canadian appear in arms against us,” he wrote in one such letter from March 1779, but “on the Contrary they would receive us with open Arms, feed, assist, and if required fight with us.”157 “There ware found very few Canadians Drawn into the field with General Burgoin, and those

156 “Moses Hazen to the Marquis de Lafayette, February 18, 1778,” in Stanley J. Idzerda, et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, 5 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 1:289; “Moses Hazen to Horatio Gates, February 20, 1778,” Letters and Papers Relating to Canadian Affairs, Sullivan's Expedition, and the Northern Indians, 1775-79 in Papers of the Continental Congress (PCC), M247, Reel 183, Item 166, 117, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 157 “To George Washington from Colonel Moses Hazen, 8 March 1779,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-19-02-0412.

283 few” were “Draged away against their wills,” he insisted three years later, and “since

Burgoins Defeat we find very few if any Canadians in arme’s in Support of the British

Government.”158 “If you once exhibit in Canada a sample of the united armes” of

“America [and] raise your Standard in that Country,” he concluded still another, the

“Canadians will I am Convinced flock to it.”159 His entreaties fell on deaf ears. By then, even Lafayette had seen fit to withdraw his support for a second invasion of Quebec.

Hazen’s men from Quebec sought to reinforce his thoughts on the matter of popular support for the rebellion in their home province as strongly as possible. When

Hazen dispatched parties of them on multiple occasions to Quebec as spies, they reported to their commander that they had “been Secreted and fed by the Clergy, by the magistrates; and by the officers of militia.”160 The “wife has not endeavoured to persuade her Husband to leave our Service, nor has the Parent the Son; or the Sister or the Brother the Near Relation,” they insisted, but “on the Contrary they have all encouraged” them and “indeavoured to Inspire them with the Necessary fortitude to be steady in the cause.”161 Indeed, according to Hazen’s Quebecois soldiers, those they encountered in the

158 “To George Washington from Moses Hazen, 26 March 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08041. 159 “To George Washington from Moses Hazen, 22 April 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08226. 160 “To George Washington from Moses Hazen, 26 March 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08041. One of the men sent by Hazen to spy in Quebec was Antoine Paulint, whose wartime experiences can be explored in Adela Peltier Reed, Memoirs of Antoine Paulint: Veteran of the Old French War, 1755 to 1760, Captain in Hazen's Second Canadian, "Congress' Own" Regiment, 1775 to 1783 (Los Angeles: San Encino Press, 1940), SOC (923.571 P328ree); and “Declaration of Theotist Paulint, January 17, 1837,” Pension Application File W. 16671 (Bvt. Maj., 2nd Can. Regt., Revolutionary War); Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service; Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, 1800–1960; Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; digital images, "Revolutionary War Pensions," Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com: accessed 31 May 2020); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication M804, roll 1891. 161 “To George Washington from Moses Hazen, 26 March 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08041.

284 northern province were all “looking forward to that period wherin they might assist themselves in Shaking off the yoak of British Government.”162 To what extent the reports made by Hazen’s men were the result of wishful thinking is difficult to ascertain. What is clear is that at least some among the habitants continued to resist British requests for military service, resistance that Britain’s representatives in the province interpreted as evidence of disloyalty. While the habitants themselves may not have conflated challenges to specific aspects of imperial authority with support for the colonial rebellion, others obviously did.

The Haldimand Administration

Chief among them was Guy Carleton’s replacement as governor of Quebec,

General Frederick Haldimand. Indeed, Haldimand spent much of his tenure in the province insisting that its Francophone inhabitants were inches away from open revolt.

The province’s Catholic priests had, following the lead of Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand, firmly upheld British rule in the province since the passage of the Quebec Act and even refused to provide the sacraments to rebel-leaning parishioners.163 Despite that fact,

Haldimand insisted they had “cooled very much to the British interests.”164 The habitants, meanwhile, had “imbibed American ideas & assisted in poisoning the minds of the Canadians.”165 Even the seigneurs, he believed, were not “so grateful as [he] had

162 “To George Washington from Moses Hazen, 26 March 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-08041. 163 For Briand’s activities during this period see “Collection Jean-Olivier Briand,” MG23-GIV4, R7848-0- 4-F, LAC; and Têtu Henri and Charles-Octave Gagnon, eds., Mandements, Lettres Pastorales Et Circulaires Des Évêques de Québec, vol. 2 (Québec: H. Tétu et C.-O. Gagnon., 1888), 160-309. 164 “Frederick Haldimand to George Germain, September 14, 1779,” in Cruikshank, ed., 3:129. 165 “Frederick Haldimand to George Germain, September 14, 1779,” in Cruikshank, ed., 3:129.

285 reason to expect” after the passage of the Quebec Act.166 Challenges to Britain’s hold over Quebec, it seemed, could be found everywhere Haldimand looked.

So, he looked everywhere, establishing a task force under Major Christopher

Carleton charged with ferreting out supposed rebel collaborators. Eventually, with the help of Benedict Arnold after his repatriation to the British cause in 1780, Carleton and

Haldimand had narrowed their list down considerably. That list included Father Pierre-

René Floquet (a Jesuit priest who had spoken with the Congressional committee that came to the province in 1776 and subsequently been laid under interdict by Bishop

Briand) and assembly party supporter Charles Hay (ousted from Quebec by Guy Carleton during the rebel siege in 1775). Their prime suspect, however, was none other than Pierre du Calvet. Indeed, as Haldimand’s investigation of Calvet intensified, most of the other targets of his other suspicions began to fall by the wayside. Bishop Briand had,

Haldimand admitted, given him “proof of his good Disposition,” while the “Inhabitants of the Towns of Quebec & Montreal presented Addresses to me full of sentiments of

Loyalty.”167 Calvet, on the other hand, had been identified by one of Carleton’s detainees as the author of several secret communications to the rebels. Armed with this information, Haldimand ordered the Huguenot merchant’s arrest and sent soldiers to search his home for further evidence. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to find anything incriminating.

Still, Calvet lingered on in prison for years, becoming a cause célèbre for his compatriots in the assembly party. According to them, the merchant had been targeted by members of the council party, who had apparently declared before his arrest that they

166 “Frederick Haldimand to George Germain, September 14, 1779,” in Cruikshank, ed., 3:129. 167 “Frederick Haldimand to George Germain, July 6, 1781,” in Cruikshank, ed., 3:203.

286 “would soon find methods of getting him thrown into prison.”168 Because he, like Guy

Carleton, relied on the council party to govern the province, the assembly party maintained, Haldimand had chosen to believe their insistences that Calvet was guilty despite all evidence to the contrary. The result, they argued, was the establishment of a police state with the governor at its head, who declared to all and sundry that “he was himself the only person who had a right to judge” Calvet’s guilt or innocence.169 In the face of an assembly party lobbying for Calvet’s release, the ministry in London evidently disagreed with the governor’s assessment. In February 1783, Home Secretary Thomas

Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, informed Haldimand that the king desired Calvet and any other political prisoners held in the province to be released.

While Haldimand no doubt found this setback frustrating, the fact that his nominal political allies were no less a thorn in his side was certainly even more so. Chief among his political antagonists from the council party was Saint-Luc. The seigneur’s imprisonment and exile by the Continental Army during their invasion of Quebec had earned them his undying enmity, Saint-Luc declaring after his release in the spring of

1777 that he would “loose the savages against the miserable Rebels” and “impose terror.”170 John Burgoyne’s characterization of Saint-Luc’s methods of doing so under his command as “odious” earned the British general a similar enmity, the seigneur declaring that he had “ceas[d] to be a gentleman.”171 Haldimand earned his own share of that enmity two years later. When he denied Saint-Luc the rank and pay of a colonel in the

168 Calvet, Case of Peter du Calvet, 97. 169 Calvet, Case of Peter du Calvet, 135. 170 “William Tryon to William Knox, April 21, 1777,” in E.B. O'Callaghan, John Romeyn Brodhead, and Berthold Fernow, eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, 15 vols. (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1853-1887), 8:706. 171 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 101; Luc de la Corne, “A Letter from the Chev. St Luc De La Corne, Colonel of the Indians, to Gen. Burgoyne,” The Scots Magazine (1778), 716.

287 regular army, the seigneur protested the governor’s rejection by “advertiz[ing] his horses and effects for sale” under the pretense that he would be leaving the province. When

Haldimand called his bluff, declaring that did not “believe he either had, or has any

Intentions of quitting” Quebec, Saint-Luc retaliated by doing everything he could to become the bane of the governor’s existence in council.172 As loyalist refugees from the lower thirteen colonies began to flood Quebec with the signing of the 1783 Treaty of

Paris granting the rebels independence, Saint-Luc’s participation in council meetings became all the more contentious.

The Loyalist Influx to Quebec

As those refugees arrived, Haldimand sought to settle them along the new border between his own province and the new territory of the United States as a buffer between the former colonies and any ill-disposed inhabitants of Quebec. He did so in part as a response to the settlement of Moses Hazen’s Quebecois veterans along the southern half of the boundary line where they might be close to their families still in the north.173 Those veterans would, he feared, have a “considerable Influence upon the Minds of their

Country Men upon Some future Occasion” and “afford a Safe and easy Azylum to the

Seditious and dissaffected of this Country.”174 So, he endeavored to place as many loyalist refugees across the border from them as possible, two displaced peoples each watching the other take up residence in their former homes.

172 “Frederick Haldimand to George Germain, September 13, 1779,” in James Murray Hadden, Hadden's Journal and Orderly Books, ed. Horatio Rogers (Albany: J. Munsell's Sons, 1884), 533. 173 For documentation of the Canadian Regiment veterans’ experiences during and after the war, see Compilation of Photocopied Documents Relating to Veterans of the 1st and 2nd Canadian Regiments, Robert A. Decoteau, comp., SOC (VF United States); and First Canadian Regiment records, 1777-1779, New York Public Library (MssCol 19034), New York, New York. 174 “Frederick Haldimand to Lord North, October 24, 1783,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 498.

288 The new inhabitants of Quebec did much more than serve as a buffer against the residents and ideas of the newly independent United States, however. They also began firmly tipping the balance of popular support in favor of the assembly party. After over a decade of seeking to win the habitants to their cause, that group found themselves with a mass of new allies who had spent their lives residing in colonies ruled by assemblies and now chafed under the strictures of the Quebec Act. Hoping to placate the growing loyalist contingent in the province, Haldimand reinstituted habeas corpus in March 1784. Seizing this new opportunity, assembly party supporter William Grant (a member of the governor’s council since his aggressive loyalty to the empire in 1775 earned him the admiration of Guy Carleton), moved in council the following month that a committee be formed to determine popular sentiments for and against an assembly. The council party, led by Saint-Luc, struck back with an address to Governor Haldimand demanding that he protect the Quebec Act if he hoped to keep the “people of this Province indissolubly attached to the Mother Country.”175 Haldimand, himself a supporter of the Quebec Act, responded by assuring the council party that his decision in March had sought only to

“remove the prejudices of the misguided against the Act of Parliament which regulates the Province” and “frustrate the Attempts of the malicious and designing” to undermine it.176 His actions did little to assuage either party. Tensions continued to mount as time went on.

Unable to ease those tensions or resolve the underlying issues behind them,

Haldimand eventually chose to remove himself from the situation entirely. Just a few months after Saint-Luc’s address demanding he adhere to the Quebec Act, Haldimand

175 “Legislative Council to Frederick Haldimand, 1784,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 503n. 176 “Governor Haldimand’s Answer, 1784,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 503n.

289 journeyed to London and tendered his resignation pleading the poor state of his health.

Saint-Luc didn’t get to enjoy his triumph over the governor for long. On October 1 of that year he died in Montreal at the age of seventy-three. Haldimand himself had even less time to enjoy his absence from Quebec. Upon his arrival in the metropole, the governor received notice that he was being sued. The plaintiff was Pierre du Calvet, who had spent the time since his liberation publishing condemnations of the government of Quebec and gathering evidence for proceedings against its governor.177 Ultimately, Calvet’s efforts came to naught. He died at sea in 1786, traveling back to London from the United States after failing to persuade Congressional leaders to fully reimburse him for the losses he had sustained when rebel soldiers confiscated his property during their retreat from

Quebec in 1776. He had planned to use the money he gained from Congress to continue his suit against Haldimand. In the absence of a plaintiff, the suit was dropped.

Calvet’s case against Haldimand may not have borne fruit, but his larger cause was certainly promising to at the time of his death. Faced with the growing Anglophone numbers in Quebec on the one hand and Quebecois resistance to imperial policies among both the upper and lower classes on the other, metropolitan officials in London were coming more and more to reconsider their support for the Quebec Act of 1774. Seigneurs like Saint-Luc held up the mechanisms of government in order to protect the prerogatives of their class and habitants showed little enthusiasm for pursuing the empire’s military aims. With that in mind, the British ministry came increasingly to conceive of Quebec’s future as one in which the Quebecois were an isolated minority. The province’s

177 Calvet wasn’t the only one who initiated legal proceedings against the governor. See “George Macbeath, trader in Canada, v. Frederick Haldimand, lately Governor of Quebec,” Treasury Solicitor and HM Procurator General Papers (TS) 11/225, TNA.

290 Francophone inhabitants had, in the eyes of British officials, simply not proven themselves loyal enough during the colonial rebellion to warrant any other treatment.

What they failed to realize, however, was that that conflict had sown the seeds of a sort of loyalty that would blossom in the years to come. The war may not have taught the

Quebecois to love Britain, but it had certainly shown them how to hate their southern neighbors in the new United States.

Eventually, that hatred would come to serve as the foundation of a united

Canadian identity within the context of the War of 1812 several decades later. In the meantime, it funneled Quebecois loyalties in the direction of their British overlords. For the moment those loyalties were conditional, a state of affairs that was only intensified by

Britain’s suspicions towards its Francophone subjects. In the decades since their conquest of the Quebec, the British had largely failed to attach the Quebecois to their interests as firmly as they desired. The experiences of Quebec’s French inhabitants during the rebel invasion of the province in 1775, however, made that attachment a growing possibility.

Faced with the aggressive expansionism of their southern neighbors and the reality that

France had no intention of returning to their lives, the Quebecois increasingly came to consider British rule their best option. As their antipathy to the United States grew, that consideration slowly blossomed into the loyalty Britain had worked so long to achieve.

291 Epilogue: More Scratching Pens: The Documents that Divided the Nations, 1783-

1814

The nineteenth-century historian Francis Parkman once wrote that “half the continent” of North America “had changed hands at the scratch of a pen” in the 1763

Treaty of Paris.1 Over a century later, historian Colin Calloway borrowed Parkman’s phrase for the title of a book exploring the profound and extensive ramifications of the treaty for life in North America. As Calloway put it, the 1763 Treaty of Paris “did more than shift cartographic boundaries.”2 It also forced colonial officials “to adjust to new situations, to organize the migration and resettlement of their subjects, and to pursue effective relations with Indian nations.”3 The exchange of territories in that document had, Calloway ably demonstrated, caused major shifts in the daily lives of inhabitants across thousands of square miles on a continent thousands of miles away from where that exchange began. The same can be said for the Treaty of Paris that followed twenty years later, a document that not only recognized the independence of the United States but set in motion a decade of change that began to solidify a division of peoples into nations.

That process began with the absorption of Quebec into the British Empire and sped forward exponentially as a result of the War of Independence. The documents that followed the conclusion of that conflict put that process into writing, drawing borders not only between the new United States and what was left of British America but between races and cultures as well.

1 Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1907), 391. 2 Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 31. 3 Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 31.

292 The Treaty of Paris, 1783

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, still dreamed of Quebec. “Now the Noble Contest is Ended,” he wrote to Elias Boudinot of

New Jersey, President of the Continental Congress, “I Heartly Rejoice at the Blessings of a Peace.”4 And, he continued, “so far as Respects me, I have no Regret.”5 “But,” he confided to Boudinot, “Independent of Personal Gratifications, it is known that I Ever

Was Bent Upon the Addition of Canada to the United States.”6 It was a powerful statement of purpose coming as it did from someone who was rapidly proving instrumental as a liaison between French and rebel diplomats as preliminary peace negotiations began in the spring of 1782 to end the American War of Independence.

Indeed, without Lafayette, the representatives that Congressional leaders dispatched to

Paris to begin those negotiations might very well have felt set adrift. It was Lafayette who convinced Britain’s ministry to release Henry Laurens from the Tower of London, where he had been languishing since 1780 when his ship to Amsterdam was waylaid by the

British navy. It was also Lafayette who called John Adams to Paris to aid Benjamin

Franklin in his talks with the French ministry and carried messages from John Jay to the same ministry during his negotiations with Spain.

With the exception of Jay, who as the rebel agent to Spain was more preoccupied with the issue of the trans-Appalachian west, Congress’ representatives in Paris were largely in accordance with the thoughts of their ally Lafayette. Writing from Amsterdam

4 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, February 5, 1783,” in Stanley J. Idzerda, et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, 5 vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 5:84. 5 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, February 5, 1783,” in Idzerda et al., eds. 5:84. 6 “Marquis de Lafayette to the President of Congress, February 5, 1783,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:84.

293 on April 16, 1782, John Adams confided to Benjamin Franklin that he believed the

United States “could ever have a real peace with Canada and Nova Scotia in the hands of the English” and informed him that Henry Laurens agreed.7 Franklin responded in turn four days later that he “was glad to learn that [Laurens’] political sentiments coincide with ours.”8 Those sentiments meant little in the face of their instructions from Congress, however. Three years earlier, Congressional leaders had instructed Adams in the event that peace negotiations were opened with Britain to consider the issue of Quebec a secondary concern to that of ending the war. “Although it is of the utmost importance to the peace and Commerce of the United States that Canada and Nova Scotia should be ceded” in such a treaty, the instructions read, “a desire of terminating the war hath induced us not to make the acquisition of these objects an ultimatum on the present occasion.”9 Coming as they did three years after the rebels had tried and failed to take

Quebec and a year after the planned second invasion under Lafayette fell apart, such instructions evidenced the waning interest of Congressional leaders in gaining Quebec if it came at a price.

By the time peace negotiations actually commenced, that interest had dipped even lower. The instructions to Congress’ agents in Europe approved in the summer of 1781 dropped the issue of Quebec from consideration entirely, informing them that “as to disputed boundaries” they were to defer “upon all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France.”10 Lafayette did his best to convince the French

7 “John Adams to Benjamin Franklin, April 16, 1782,” in Benjamin Franklin, Letters from France: The Private Diplomatic Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, 1776-1785, ed. Brett F. Woods (New York: Algora Publishing, 2006), 91. 8 “Benjamin Franklin to John Adams, April 20, 1782,” in Woods, ed., 92 9 Worthington C. Ford et al., eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 25 vols. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1904-1937), 14:959-60. 10 Ford et al., eds, 20:651.

294 ministry that it was in their best interests to orchestrate the cession of Quebec, writing to

Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, that if Britain felt the province was secure it would be “easy for them to withdraw” surplus troops and direct them “against our islands.”11

Once more, his reasoning fell on deaf ears.

Indeed, Vergennes had long ago made up his mind on the issue of Quebec and informed the rebel diplomats of as much. The “giving up of that country to the English at the last peace had been a politic act in France,” he informed Benjamin Franklin at the beginning of the negotiations, for “it had weakened the ties between England and her colonies.”12 When Franklin responded by speaking “occasions of future quarrels that might be produced by [Britain] continuing to hold it,” the comte responded that it would

“necessarily oblige us to cultivate and strengthen our union with France.”13 Vergennes’ words to Franklin on that occasion represented over a decade of French policy. He had little inclination to see Quebec joined to the United States. Restricted as he was by

Congress to adhere to French desires at the treaty talks, Franklin had little hope of fulfilling his or Adams’ or Laurens’ or Lafayette’s dream of affairs being otherwise.

When the peace accord recognizing the United States’ independence was finally signed in

September 1783, the border between the new nation and Quebec was fixed at the forty- fifth parallel down the middle of the Great Lakes. After gaining the territory below that line in the Quebec Act nine years earlier, the northern province lost it once and for all.

With their boundaries funneling them westward, the citizens and leaders of the newly independent United States turned their gaze away from their northern neighbors.

11 “Marquis de Lafayette to the Comte de Vergennes, November 22, 1782,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:71. 12 Woods, ed., 86 13 Woods, ed., 86

295 The Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1784

That gaze came almost immediately to rest with a new intensity upon the Native communities situated in the western borderlands. In ceding their claims to lands south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River, the British abandoned their Native allies there to the less than tender mercies of a government that believed it had conquered them by right of their victory over Britain. In light of this belief, Congressional leaders moved quickly to conclude treaties with Native groups that removed them from their territory and drove them westward. According to a report of the Committee on Indian

Affairs released a month after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the policy was, in the eyes of Congress, “just and necessary” because those groups had been “aggressors in the war, without even a pretence of provocation.”14 “In return for proffered protection and liberal supplies” of gifts and provisions, the report claimed, they had “wantonly desolated our villages and settlements, and destroyed our citizens.”15 “Only a bare recollection of the facts,” the committee reasoned, “is sufficient to manifest the obligation [the Indians] are under to make atonement for the enormities which they have perpetrated.”16 Thus, the report concluded, “a reasonable compensation” for their “wanton barbarity” is a

“compliance with the proposed boundaries.”17 Thus justifying their hunger for western lands, Congressional leaders pushed to make the nominal boundaries of their new nation a reality.

14 “Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783.” in Colin G. Calloway and Alden T. Vaughan, eds., Revolution and Confederation, Vol. XVIII, Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1994), 290. 15 “Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783,” in Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 291. 16 “Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783,” in Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 291. 17 “Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783,” in Calloway and Vaughan, eds., 291.

296 One of their first moves in that direction was the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which delegates of the Iroquois ceded their confederacy’s remaining claims in the Ohio country and what became western Pennsylvania. Among the guests of honor at the proceedings was none other than the marquis de Lafayette, who found himself once more at the center of events a year after – and three thousand miles away from – his role in the

Treaty of Paris. Indeed, Lafayette’s appearance at the proceedings for Fort Stanwix caused, by all accounts, a considerable stir among the Natives present. According to one of Lafayette’s traveling companions, Francois Barbé-Marbois, France’s chargé d’affaires at the time, Lafayette was practically feted by every Native group they met. “These savages still have great respect for the king of France” and “speak of the French nation with reverence,” Barbé-Marbois recorded in his journal, but “M. de Lafayette has their confidence and attachment to an extraordinary extent.”18 “Those who had already seen him,” he continued, “were very eager to see him again.”19 What’s more, he wrote, “they had transmitted their enthusiasm to their friends.”20 All “seemed proud,” he concluded,

“to wear around their necks the presents he had given them before.”21 Lafayette confirmed Barbé-Marbois’ impression in a letter to his wife, Adrienne de Noailles de

Lafayette, on October 4. “My personal credit with the savages,” he wrote, “has proved to be much greater than I had supposed.”22 The attention was, according to him, exhausting.

I am “surrounded by Hurons and Iroquois,” he told her, and “very weary of the role of

18 “Barbé Marbois Journal,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:251. 19 “Barbé Marbois Journal,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:251. 20 “Barbé Marbois Journal,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:252. 21 “Barbé Marbois Journal,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:252. 22 “Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, October 4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:260.

297 father of the family which has been forced on me here.”23 His desire to aid the United

States had finally found its limits.

Nonetheless, according to Lafayette, his influence with the Indians at the treaty council was so great that the “congressional ambassadors” were “obliged to have recourse to me,” even though they “certainly did not care to be under obligation to me.”24

So, he told his wife, “I mounted the speaker’s rostrum” and “I love to think that I have contributed to a treaty” that “will ensure the tranquility of the Americans.”25 The

“Americans are close friends of your fathers the French,” he told his Native listeners, and

“this alliance is as enduring as it has been fortunate.”26 “You know that while several are entitled to Congress’s gratitude,” he reminded them, “there are many whose only resources is to be found in its clemency and whose past mistakes require amends.”27

Those groups should “in selling lands” let the “American chiefs and yours, joined together around the fire, conclude reasonable bargains” to redress the United States’ perceived grievances.28 The marquis then assured his audience that “France will always hold one end of the [peace] belt and that it will also be held by America, whose alliance with France will maintain communications between the French and their children.”29

With that, he left them to the devices of the Congressional representatives, and began his long journey home.

23 “Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, October 4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:260. 24 “Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, October 4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:260. 25 “Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, October 4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:260-261. 26 “Lafayette’s Meeting with the Six Nations, October 3-4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:256. 27 “Lafayette’s Meeting with the Six Nations, October 3-4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:256. 28 “Lafayette’s Meeting with the Six Nations, October 3-4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:256. 29 “Lafayette’s Meeting with the Six Nations, October 3-4, 1784,” in Idzerda et al., eds., 5:258.

298 In doing so, the marquis abandoned the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix to the ministrations of Congressional agents who used their perceived right to Native land by conquest (and Lafayette’s influence) to gain the first in a long series of cessions that eventually force the confederacy out of their traditional territory entirely. They did so without the full approval of each constituent tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy, counting on the fact that the confederacy was too weakened and divided by the war to effectively resist. Congress repeated these actions in the following years in multiple treaty councils across the claimed territory of the United States like the 1785 Treaties of Fort McIntosh,

Galphinton, Dumplin Creek, and Hopewell and the 1786 Treaties of Fort Finney, Chota, and Shoulderbone. Because of these treaties, British-allied indigenous groups were forced off their lands and westward toward the Mississippi River.

Eventually, even Native communities that had allied themselves to the rebels during the war found themselves facing pressure to remove westward. The ongoing push among the citizenry and leadership of the United States to define their collective identity in terms of racial exclusivity precluded the acceptance of such groups in a nation that built its sense of belonging on a foundation of white supremacy.30 Among the indigenous groups targeted by this development were the Oneidas, to whom New York Governor

George Clinton declared the summer after the Treaty of Fort Stanwix a desire “to purchase such Lands from You as You conceive it your Interest to sell.”31 When his listeners balked, led by the staunch rebel ally Good Peter (Agwrongdougwas), Clinton

30 David J. Silverman, “Racial Walls: Race and the Emergence of American White Nationalism,” in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman, eds., Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 181-204. 31 “At a Meeting with the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Fort Herkimer, July 23, 1785,” in Franklin Benjamin Hough, ed., Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs Appointed by Law for the Extinguishment of Indian Titles in the State of New York (Albany: J. Munsell, 1861), 1:86.

299 “expressed his Astonishment” that Good Peter “who had been with the Enemy should speak so often.”32 Insulted at Clinton’s insinuation after years of fighting the British, the

Oneida leader responded by refusing to treat with him further. His place was taken by

Peter the Quartermaster, or Beech Tree (Oneyana), who subsequently promised the governor that the Oneidas would “give You such a Tract as will satisfy You.”33 It was the first of many such agreements between the Oneidas and the state of New York following the War for Independence, agreements that pushed a growing number of that group to seek homes beyond the borders of the United States. Many settled in what became

Wisconsin; others chose to accept the invitation of their Iroquois confederates who had sought refuge among the British in Quebec.

The most prominent by far of those Iroquois who settled in Quebec was the

Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendanagea), whose sister Molly (Konwatsi'tsiaienni) had been Sir William Johnson’s common-law wife for years before his death in 1774.

Brant took it upon himself to act as the Mohawks’ chief representative to British officials in Quebec, using that role as a platform for his larger ambition to become the principal leader of the Iroquois who settled in the northern province after the War for

Independence. Eager as always to avoid grappling with the diffuse power structure of

Native societies those officials met the Mohawk leader halfway, encouraging other

Iroquois leaders in the region to subsume their interests to those of Brant. Together, Brant and Britain’s representatives in Quebec negotiated the establishment of a reserve for the

Iroquois along the Grand River that flowed into Lake Erie. As Brant put it to Frederick

32 “At a Meeting with the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Fort Herkimer, July 27, 1785,” in Hough, ed., 1:102. 33 “At a Meeting with the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Fort Herkimer, July 27, 1785,” in Hough, ed., 1:102.

300 Haldimand in May 1783, “we assisted you in conquering all Canada” and fought against the rebels in the War for Independence “at the Risque of our Lives Families and

Property.”34 They were thus, Brant argued, owed recompense. The governor’s superiors in London wholeheartedly agreed, former Prime Minister Frederick North, 2nd Earl of

Guilford, writing in an August letter to Haldimand that the Mohawks were “justly entitled to Our peculiar Attention.”35 After decades as firm allies of the British Empire, both parties agreed, the Mohawks had earned the right to primacy of place in the dispensation of new homelands.

Brant had far more ambitious plans for the territory along the Grand River than its use as a new homeland for the British-allied Mohawks, however. He insisted that the land should be reserved not only for the use of the Mohawks, but “such of the Six Nations as are inclined to join them.”36 Those among the Oneidas who sought new homes in Quebec did so upon Brant’s invitation, an effort to reconstitute the powerful confederacy so damaged by a century of war. Brant also, however, requested that the British government secure additional land surrounding the Iroquois tract and reserve it for sale to whomever the Confederacy chose. As the years went by, Brant managed to “induce many from other tribes to incorporate” with the Iroquois by selling them land in the area surrounding the main reserve on the Grand River.37 For them, as it had been for the Oneidas, the land on the Grand River was a refuge from the aggressive territorial expansion of the United

34 “Joseph Brant’s Speech to Frederick Haldimand at Quebec, May 21, 1783,” in Charles M. Johnston, The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents on the Indian Lands of the Grand River (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1964), 39-40. 35 “Lord North to Frederick Haldimand, August 8, 1783,” in Johnston, ed., 42. 36 “Substance of Joseph Brant’s Wishes Respecting Forming a Settlement on the Grand River, March 1783,” in Johnston, ed., 44. 37 “John Stuart’s Report to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, October 11, 1798,” in Johnston, ed., 66.

301 States. For Brant, it was the beginnings of a pan-Indian homeland with the Iroquois at the center.

The notion of such a homeland grew from the racial consciousness taking root just as much in Native minds as it was in Euroamerican ones and Brant was by no means alone in embracing it. When British representatives joined Brant in asking the

Mississaugas living along the Grand River to sell them land for the Iroquois reserve, their request was met with enthusiasm. “Your request or proposal, does not give us that trouble or concern, that you might imagine,” the Mississaugas told their supplicants, for “we are

Indians, and consider ourselves and the Six Nations to be one and the same people.”38 It was a generous sentiment, but one that ultimately proved the Mississaugas’ undoing.

Over the following years, the British government convinced them to cede much of their territory for sale not just to other Native groups but to Loyalists from the former colonies as well. Recognizing the profits to be gained from such sales even Brant got in on the action, offering lands for purchase by Loyalists on the tract surrounding the Grand River reserve. The action drew immediate protest from his Iroquois neighbors, who appealed to

Guy Carleton (returned to Quebec as governor in 1785). Carleton, ever eager to avoid race mixing, promised to “order all the white people off the Lands” in question.39 The

Grand River lands would, if its Native inhabitants had anything to say about it, remain a haven for those dispossessed by colonialism.

The Iroquois were not the only Native inhabitants of the province with cause for concern regarding the presence of Loyalists in Quebec. In addition to negotiating land sales with the Mississaugas to settle refugees on the northern side of the new border with

38 “A Six Nations’ Meeting with the Mississaugas, May 22, 1784,” in Johnston, ed., 47. 39 “Speech by John Deseronto, September 2-10, 1800,” in Johnston, ed., 54.

302 the United States, Frederick Haldimand had worked to secure territory between the border and Montreal for further settlements. The mission village of Akwesasne lay squarely in the middle of that territory and claimed the land surrounding it through a grant from the French government that their former priest Anthony Gordon had refused to surrender to their care. The Akwesasnes’ inability to produce documentation proving their ownership of the land around their community gave Haldimand the opening he needed to initiate proceedings to extinguish their claim. They in turn responded by protesting the governor’s action to Sir John Johnson, who had taken over as

Superintendent of the Indian Department from his cousin Guy. Although they agreed with the efforts to “reestablish those unfortunate People” who had suffered “in the

Service of our King & Country,” they told Johnson, it would also be “unjust in their

Father to take away from them” the “lands they had always looked upon as theirs, to make up the losses he had been the cause of, to others.”40 Their protest was in vain.

Ultimately, Haldimand granted the Akwesasnes title to a much smaller tract of land surrounding their village that they held at the British Crown’s pleasure and settled

Loyalists on the rest of their former territory.

The Constitutional Act, 1791

The Loyalist influx to Quebec prompted challenges to the land tenure of the province’s seigneurs as well. Immigrants to the region who had spent their entire lives under British landholding systems in the lower thirteen colonies had no desire to rent from landlords as controlling as Quebec’s seigneurial class. Most thus sought to obtain

40 “John Johnson to Frederick Haldimand, March 11, 1784,” in Haldimand Papers and Correspondence, MIC-Loyalist FC LMR .H3F7P3, Add. Mss. 21775, B-115, reproduction copy number H-1450, 234, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

303 lands without agreeing to the sort of obligations demanded by seigneurs of their habitants, particularly the landlords’ exclusive right to grind all grain produced by their tenants, saw all their lumber, and charge them fees for both services. Some seigneurs whose land had yet to be densely settled sought to attract Loyalists to populate their seigneuries by abandoning such practices. Chief among this particular group was

Charles-Louis Tarieu de Lanaudière, aide-de-camp to Guy Carleton during his first governorship and his companion during the desperate flight from Montreal to the city of

Quebec in 1775. In 1783, Lanaudière posted an advertisement in the Quebec Gazette offering potential tenants the opportunity to live on land in his seigneuries of Lac-

Maskinongé and Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade rent free for a decade and have their grain ground and their lumber sawn gratis for the first four years.41 Seven years after posting this advertisement Lanaudière went a step further, submitting a proposal to the governor’s council (of which he had been a member since Carleton’s return to the province in 1786) to abolish the seigneurial system entirely as “complex, arbitrary, injurious.”42 Naturally, the proposal faced stiff opposition from those of the council hailing from the seigneurial class whose lands were already densely settled by

Francophone habitants and had little incentive to attract Loyalist tenants.

Unfortunately for that particular group, they had become more and more of a minority voice in the governor’s council since Carleton returned to the province to replace Frederick Haldimand. Unsure of how the influx of Loyalists would impact

41 “Quebec Gazette, May 15, 1783,” in Ernest Cruikshank, ed., A History of the Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada: From the Peace of Paris in 1763, to the Present Time. With Illustrative Documents, 3 vols. (Ottawa: Canadian Government, 1919-1920), 3:232. 42 “Answers submitted by Charles de Lanaudiere to various Questions relating to the Seigniorial System, October 11, 1790,” in William Bennett Munro, ed., Documents Relating to the Seigniorial Tenure in Canada, 1598-1854 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1908), 273.

304 popular sentiment in Quebec, Carleton leaned more and more in the direction of the assembly party as his second term as governor progressed, pushed in that direction by his longtime friend and recent appointee as chief justice William Smith. By the time

Lanaudière submitted his proposal in 1790, the seigneurs and their council party allies were increasingly likely to be on the losing side of council votes. Lanaudière’s proposal was no exception, the council declaring that the “population of the province depending now” upon “British subjects” it was necessary to allow seigneurs the opportunity to submit a “petition to the governor” of Quebec “setting forth that he” is “desirous of holding [his lands] in free and common” tenure and “cause a fresh grant to be made.”43

Led by Adam Mabane, the other seigneurs of the council and their supporters protested the decision “because the predilection of the native inhabitants of the province to their ancient tenures and laws ought not to be interfered with unless by their own consent.”44 It was to no avail. The tide had simply turned against them.

The turning of that tide did not mean that British officials in either the colony or the metropole could ignore the Quebecois elite and their supporters wholesale. The new

Loyalist population might be substantial and the Anglophone demographic growing overall, but the French-speaking inhabitants of the province were still a force to be reckoned with and the upper classes of that contingent were well organized. So, the empire could neither rule the province wholly along French lines as it had with the

Quebec Act in 1774 or entirely along British lines as it wished after the War for

Independence. The passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791 was the result, dividing the

43 “Resolutions of the Council relating to the Seigniorial System, October 11, 1790,” in Munro, ed., 275; 278. 44 “Reasons submitted by Mr. Adam Mabane, Member of the Council, in support of his Dissent from the Resolutions adopted by the Council, October 15, 1790,” in Munro, ed., 280.

305 former province of Quebec along cultural lines. Those in the newly created province of

Upper Canada (now southern Ontario) would follow British civil law, while those in

Lower Canada (now southern Quebec) would continue to live under the system established in the Quebec Act of 1774. Both would be given the opportunity to establish representative assemblies. This was an opportunity that metropolitan officials like

William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville hoped would convince the Quebecois of the

“liberal and enlightened spirit of the British Government.”45 This, in turn, he believed, might foster among the Quebecois a “sense of [the] common interest” they shared with all those who lived within the empire.46 The Francophone elite of British North America had been granted a reprieve, an opportunity to continue living as they had for decades.

The reprieve was only temporary, however. The metropole was more determined than ever to Anglicize its empire.

The Edict of Fraternity, 1792

That determination became even stronger in light of the French Revolution, an event that convinced Anglophone officials and subjects in both Canadas that the

Quebecois remained a potential threat to imperial security in light of their tenacious hold on Francophone culture. This conviction was by no means dispelled by the actions of the revolutionaries themselves, who issued an “Edict of Fraternity” on November 19, 1792 declaring that they would “grant fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty.”47 Among those peoples, the Quebecois seemed of significant

45 “Lord Grenville to Lord Dorchester, October 20, 1789,” in in Adam Shortt and Arthur George Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1759-1791, 2 vols. (Ottawa: Printed by J. De L. Taché, 1918), 2:988. 46 “Lord Grenville to Lord Dorchester, October 20, 1789,” in Shortt and Doughty, eds., 2:988. 47 “Edict of Fraternity, November 19, 1792,” in Margaret R. O'Leary, Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr of Médelsheim (Bloomington, IL: iUniverse, 2012).

306 concern to the new leaders of France. In their October 1792 instructions to Edmond

Genêt, ambassador to the United States, they declared their intention to follow a

“diametrically opposite” course to that of the former ministry and encouraged him to work “to reunite perhaps to the American Constellation the beautiful star of Canada.”48

When George Washington issued a proclamation the following spring insisting that

United States would remain neutral in the war between Revolutionary France and Britain,

Genêt chose to fulfil his instructions on his own. By the summer of 1793, the ambassador had recruited 2,500 residents from New York City and enlisted the aid of the French

West Indian fleet anchored in its harbor at the time to transport his army northward.

Ultimately, Genêt’s invasion fell apart as quickly as Lafayette’s had in 1778. The commanders of the West Indian fleet eventually decided his invasion plan was unlikely to succeed and simply sailed away. Still, the Canadas’ Anglophone inhabitants remained on edge.

The reality was that although many of the Quebecois celebrated the early activities of the French revolutionaries as their former metropole moved toward a constitutional monarchy after 1789, the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 made the revolution a topic of much heated debate. While the English-speaking residents of the

Canadas almost universally denounced the turn of events, those who spoke French proved split on the issue. According to a British traveler in the Canadas named

Guillemard whose observations were recorded in the 1795-1797 travel journal of

François Alexandre Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld, duc de La Rochefoucauld, the difference in opinion in Lower Canada followed class lines. As Guillemard put it, the

48 Frederick Jackson Turner, ed., Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791-1797, 2 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 2:203-204.

307 “first class [seigneurs]” were known to “detest the French Revolution,” the “second

[middle] class” to “applaud the principles of the French Revolution, but abhor [its] crimes,” and the habitants to “love France” without a “thought of the French Revolution, of which they scarcely know any thing at all.”49 Édouard Charles Victurnien Colbert, comte de Maulévrier, echoed Guillemard’s estimation of popular opinion in the Canadas in his own travel journal from 1798, writing that the habitants he encountered did not

“want to believe in the death of the King of France.” Instead, he recounted, they insisted that “he’s hidden” and “don’t want to hear a word about the Revolution’s atrocities” because they believed that the “good French people” were not “capable of that.”50 Three decades after Quebec’s fall to the British, it seemed, France retained its hold over the habitants.

The habitants attachment to their former metropole did not appear to extend to

France’s allies in the United States. True to form, when Guy Carleton called for 2,000

Quebecois militiamen to muster in 1794 as tensions rose with the United States over control of the Great Lakes, the habitants largely refused to respond, rumors abounding that the governor intended to enlist them for life and exile them from Lower Canada.

Ultimately, out of a hoped-for 222 companies of Quebecois militiamen Carleton was able to raise seventeen, no doubt flashing back all the while to the events of the rebel invasion in 1775. According to the duc de La Rochefoucauld, however, the habitants’ resistance in

1794 had an added dimension, some of them declaring publicly that “if they were to act

49 François-Alexandre-Frédéric La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America: the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797; with an Authentic Account of Lower Canada, Henry Neuman, ed., 4 vols. (London, UK: R. Phillips, 1799), 1:569. 50 Édouard Charles Victurnien Colbert, comte de Maulévrier, Voyage dans l’intérieur des États-Unis et au Canada [in 1798], ed. Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935), 66.

308 against the Americans, they would certainly march in defence of their country, but that against the French they should not march, because they would not fight against their brethren.”51 These sentiments were echoed by habitants from La Prairie, who dispatched a letter to the French consulate in New York City in 1795 insisting that they would

“defend the English against all their enemies except the French, because they will never take arms against their fathers, their brothers or their relations.”52 The distinction the habitants evidently made between their willingness to confront the United States and their unwillingness to fight against France is a revealing one, an indication of the cultural boundaries dictating their relative attachment to the British Empire. The conviction they had gained in the 1775 Quebec Campaign that British rule was preferable to the rebel alternative evidently still held strong. What it did not do was make them loyal British subjects no matter the cost. They were, first and foremost, a conquered Francophone populace determined to preserve its cultural distinctiveness.

The alarm such evidence of habitant recalcitrance caused among British officials was by no means lessened after Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804.

The new emperor’s ambassador to the United States that year, General Louis-Marie

Turreau, openly entertained plans for an expedition against the British in the Canadas.

Napoleon himself had, as First Consul of the French Republic, abandoned his grandiose plans for North American expansion the previous year by concluding the sale of the

Louisiana Territory to the United States. Turreau, meanwhile, had expressed in his interest in exploring the prospect of invading the Canadas to Jacques Rousse, a

51 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 1:543. 52 “Lettre des Canadiens au consul de la Republique Française a New York,” in Michel Brunet, “Les Canadiens Et La France Révolutionnaire,” Revue D'histoire De L'Amérique Française 13, no. 4 (March 1960): 475.

309 Quebecois double agent working for British counterintelligence. Five years later, Turreau voiced his interest yet again to the brother of the Napoleonic General Louis-Vincent-

Joseph Le Blond, comte de Saint-Hilaire, whom he eventually sent into the north in an effort to gauge popular sentiment among the Quebecois in favor of an invasion.

By 1810 Turreau’s emperor had cycled back towards favoring a North American conquest, affairs in Europe having arrived at a momentary lull. That year, he ordered former Vice President of the United States (who was living in Paris after killing in a duel) to draw up a proposal for conquering the Canadas.

Burr, who served as Richard Montgomery’s aide-de-camp during the 1775 Quebec

Campaign, considered the invasion a likely success.53 His audience did not agree. With resistance to French rule in Spain growing to new heights by the end of the year with an extensive guerilla campaign, Napoleon lost interest in the scheme once and for all. The door on France’s return to North America had been shut as firmly as it had decades before by the duc de Choiseul and comte de Vergennes.

Britain’s representatives in the Canadas did not possess that information, however, and their suspicion of the Quebecois as a threat to imperial security intensified at the very moment that Napoleon shelved his North American plans for good. The governor-general of the province at the time, Sir James Craig, had spent a good deal of his tenure in office up to that point at loggerheads with the opposition party that had formed in Lower Canada’s assembly after its formation in 1792. That group, composed primarily of individuals from the rising Quebecois middle class, had done much to restrict the power of the seigneurs and their allies from the council party, activities that

53 See “On the Continent,” in David O. Stewart, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 283-90.

310 Craig interpreted as evidence of their treasonous intentions by conflating their behavior with the habitants’ continued avowals of attachment to France. With tensions between

Britain and the United States reaching new heights in March 1810 Craig chose his moment to strike, arresting members of his political opposition on suspicion of sedition, shutting down the opposition newspaper Le Canadien, and suspending the assembly.54

Craig’s actions did his empire few favors, effectively alienating most of the Quebecois below the elite from British rule. By the end of Craig’s term as governor the following year, there seemed little reason to expect the Quebecois to muster in defense of the province in the event of a war with the United States.

Treaty of Ghent, 1814

Given the circumstances, the shift in popular sentiment among the Quebecois from opposing military service against the French to opposing it wholesale was an alarming development. Indeed, by 1811 it was clear that the United States and Britain were on the precipice of war and that the Canadas would likely be a main theater of the conflict. Though the British had finally ceded control of their outposts in the borderlands south of the Great Lakes in the Jay Treaty sixteen years earlier, they had continued to treat with indigenous communities living within the nominal territory of the United

States. This was particularly concerning to American leaders in light of the rise of the

Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother, the prophet Tenskwatawa, who sought to establish a pan-Indian confederacy in the Great Lakes region driven by a rejection of

European culture and opposition to colonial expansion. Encouraged by the British from

54 See “Craig’s ‘Reign of Terror,’ 1810-1811,” in F. Murray. Greenwood, Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution (Toronto: Published for the Osgoode Society by the University of Toronto Press, 1993), 384-414.

311 the north, the brothers’ efforts for a time proved remarkably effective at checking the

United States’ continued settlement in the region.

Convinced that Britain was their nation’s primary impediment to westward expansion, a party of Republican politicians led by Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay pushed in increasingly strong terms for an invasion of the Canadas. In a speech to

Congress on February 22, 1810, Clay assured his peers that the “conquest of Canada is in your power” and urged them to “avenge the fall of the immortal Montgomery.”55 The following year, as Speaker of the House, Clay again called for an invasion of Canada, this time decrying the fate of the United States’ borderlands citizens who were “exposed to all the perils of treacherous savage warfare” because of Britain’s continued presence to their north.56 President James Madison echoed Clay’s reasoning in his request to Congress for a declaration of war on June 1, 1812, protesting the “warfare just renewed by the savages” as a result of the “constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons,” warfare that was “peculiarly shocking to humanity.”57 Such words could just as easily have come from the lips of Philip Schuyler three decades before, or those of Sir William

Johnson even earlier. Sentiments south of Quebec had, it seemed, changed little since the

War of Independence in regard to the perceived threat to be found in alliances between the British and Indians.

When Congress approved Madison’s request, issuing a declaration of war on June

18 and ordering military leaders to begin preparations for a northern invasion, few in the

55 “Speech on Proposed Repeal of Non-Intercourse Act, February 22, 1810,” in Henry Clay, The Papers of Henry Clay, ed. James F. Hopkins, 10 vols. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1959), 1:450. 56 “Amendment to, and Speech on, the Bill to Raise an Additional Military Force, December 31, 1811,” in Hopkins, ed., 1:609. 57 James Madison, “Special Message to Congress on the Foreign Policy Crisis, June 1, 1812,” Miller Center, February 23, 2017, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/june-1-1812- special-message-congress-foreign-policy-crisis-war.

312 United States believed the Quebecois would be anything but welcoming to the invaders.

Madison’s predecessor and boon companion Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to future

Secretary of the Treasury William Duane that the “acquisition of Canada” would be a

“mere matter of marching.”58 It was a widespread belief, one rooted in a conviction developed during the War of Independence that the Quebecois chafed under British rule and thus would welcome their supposed liberation by southern invaders. While the first assumption may have been largely true, the second was decidedly not.

Indeed, as various habitants had stated multiple times over the years since the colonial rebellion, they were adamantly opposed to an incorporation into the United

States and were willing to resist such an eventuality by force if necessary. The majority of habitants resisted militia service up to the very moment the American invasion began in July of 1812, sure as they had been so many times before that such service would mean their permanent enlistment and transportation out of the province. By October, three months into the invasion, however, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Bisshopp was able to report that they had enlisted “with the greatest alacrity” because “altho’ they abominate the

War, they hate the very name of an American.”59 That hatred proved crucial in stiffening the resolve of the Canadas’ defenders and, tempered in the fires of the invaders’ treatment of the local populace over the course of their campaign, only grew as time progressed. Echoing the rebels’ callous exploitation of the habitants as they departure from Quebec in 1776, the American soldiers that experienced similar setbacks three decades later left nothing but devastation in the wake of their retreat south. Their

58 “Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 4 August 1812,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-05-02-0231. 59 “Cecil Bisshopp to Kate Bisshopp, October 19, 1812,” Cecil Bisshopp fonds, MG 24-F 4, LAC.

313 behavior served as the death knell of American hopes for a Canadian state. Neither the

Francophone nor Anglophone residents of the United States’ northern neighbor had welcomed or would welcome southern rule. For the first time since 1775, the invaders had come to realize the depth of northern antagonism to their governance with a real sense of finality.

The peace negotiations opened at Ghent in the Netherlands in 1814 between

Britain and the United States moved that realization toward a more permanent reality. In

June of the previous year, Secretary of State James Monroe had instructed his peace commissioners in Europe to insist on the “transfer of the upper parts [Great Lakes] and even the whole of Canada to the U S.”60 The categorical defeat of American forces in their attempts to take both Canadas the following fall made those instructions less than feasible. So, in June of 1814 James Madison’s cabinet approved new instructions to the peace commissioners permitting them to negotiate a treaty that restored the status quo ante bellum. By then, American leaders wished only that the boundary between the

United States and British North America remain where it had been since the Treaty of

Paris was signed in 1783.

Britain’s commissioners at Ghent had other ideas, however. Unlike their predecessors in Paris thirty years earlier, the British delegates discussing peace with their

American counterparts after the War of 1812 did not enter the negotiations with the intention of leaving their indigenous allies to their own devices. Instead, rather than immediately agreeing to the American offer to maintain the boundary between the United

60 “James Monroe to Albert Gallatin and James Bayard, June 23, 1813,” in James A. Bayard, Papers of James A. Bayard, 1796-1815, ed. Elizabeth Donnan (Washington: American Historical Association, 1915), 228.

314 States and the Canadas as it had been before the war, Britain’s representatives insisted on the creation of an Indian territory between the two that might serve as a buffer to any future invasions. The suggestion, an extension of British efforts to settle Indian allies and

Loyalist refugees along the northern side of the Great Lakes after the War for

Independence, provoked instant protests from the Americans.61 Writing to James Monroe on August 18, Henry Clay (pressed into service as a diplomat for the negotiations) recounted that “not one of us, for a single moment, harboured the idea that it was possible for us to come to any agreement” on the matter.62 The idea that Britain sought to “treat for savage tribes, scattered over our acknowleged [sic] territory,” he remarked, was an

“absurdity” they would not “dwell upon.”63 Realizing Clay and his compatriots would not budge on the issue, the British eventually abandoned the idea. “I had till I came here no idea,” British peace commissioner Henry Goulburn admitted afterwards, “of the fixed determination which prevails in the breast of every American to extirpate the Indians and appropriate their territory.”64 That determination was reflected in the final treaty document Goulburn signed. The Treaty of Ghent included no stipulations regarding indigenous territory, allowing the United States to conclude peace with their Native enemies however they saw fit.

While the Treaty of Ghent may not have done anything to protect Native boundaries, its cementation of the border between the Canadas and the United States

61 For explorations of such efforts, see Colin Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987) and Robert S. Allen, His Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008). 62 “Henry Clay to James Monroe, August 18, 1814,” in Hopkins, ed., 1:964-965. 63 “Henry Clay to James Monroe, August 18, 1814,” in Hopkins, ed., 1:965. 64 “Henry Goulburn to Earl Bathurst, November 25, 1814,” in Arthur Wellesley Wellington, Supplementary Despatches and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington, Arthur Richard Wellesley Wellington, ed., 15 vols. (London: John Murray, 1858), 9:454.

315 nonetheless played a role in ensuring the continued rise in popularity in Native communities of the idea that their world was best preserved by racial separation.

Abandoned by their European allies yet again, indigenous leaders came more and more to conclude that their best course forward was a total rejection of Europeans and their cultures. The intertwined growth of the conviction among such leaders that their communities shared more with each other than with colonial invaders, meanwhile, fed the recurrent attempts Native groups on the continent made to form confederacies devoted to securing a pan-Indian homeland safe from colonization.65 As the nineteenth century progressed the determination in Native America that Indians were a separate people whose survival hinged on a segregation from the white inhabitants of the continent became increasingly common, spreading to each new area colonial invaders encountered.

Those invaders spread westward along both sides of the border, fueled by parallel nationalisms in the United States and the Canadas that historian Alan Taylor has observed at the end of the War of 1812.66 In the United States, American leaders believed the Treaty of Ghent had ratified their vision of continental expansion south of the

Canadas by forcing the “British to choose between alliance with the Indians and peace with the republic.”67 In the north, meanwhile, “hatred of the invaders generated a new patriotism” and the border confirmed in Ghent “became a powerful divide separating recent enemies.”68 The first explicitly prohibited Native inclusion as a fundamental tenet.

The second permitted it only as long as it proved convenient. Just as in the United States,

65 See, for example, Patrick J. Jung, The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008) and Gregory E. Smoak, Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 66 See Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012). 67 Taylor, Civil War, 446. 68 Taylor, Civil War, 452-53.

316 the Canadians that expanded Britain’s North American holdings westward showed little empathy for the indigenous communities that stood in their way. In their minds the lands north of the border were theirs in much the same way that Americans considered those lying south of the border, but with a twist. According to Canadians, their country was meant to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific just as Americans believed the United

States should. Their dream was not simply intended to spread European culture across the continent, however. It was also a means of counterbalancing American power on the continent.69 The Canadian hatred of their southern neighbors lived on.

Conclusions

That hatred was born out of the historical processes set in motion by Britain’s conquest of Quebec over five decades earlier. That event provoked intense debate on both sides of the Atlantic questioning the place of Quebec in the worlds of Europe and North

America. At its core, this debate was rooted in ideas of race and culture that governed life on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and eventually extended across the continents of both

Europe and North America. Regardless of their chosen solution to the problem of incorporating Quebec into their empire, British leaders in both the metropole and colonies believed fundamentally in the perceived inferiority of the Quebecois as French and Roman Catholic. They thus tailored their positions accordingly, those in the metropole advocating the Quebecois’ conversion and assimilation into Anglo-Protestant society and those in the colony itself arguing for a cooptation of local elite power to play upon their Francophone subjects’ supposed penchant for obedience to tyrannical authority. The Anglophone inhabitants of Britain’s thirteen colonies to the south of

69 James W.J. Bowden, “George Brown and Canada’s Manifest Destiny,” The Dorchester Review 8, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2018): 44-47.

317 Quebec, meanwhile, celebrated its conquest as an opportunity for assimilation and decried the rejection of such policies as an indication of the British ministry’s growing tyranny. Britain’s enemies in the French ministry happily sought to exploit these tensions between metropole and colonies, using them as an opportunity to pursue a new vision of empire that slowly but surely broadened the rift between the Crown and France’s aristocracy.

Inside the province itself, the indigenous communities that dotted the St.

Lawrence River Valley faced growing challenges to their sovereignty after the Seven

Years’ War not only from the new rulers of Quebec but from the powerful Native confederacies that dominated affairs in the surrounding borderlands. The reaction of those communities to such challenges depended much on their relative individual circumstances. The Hurons of Wendake were both too small and close to British officials in the city of Quebec to fully resist the efforts of both Britain and their brethren in the

Great Lakes to influence events in their community. The Abenakis of Odanak, on the other hand, proved adept at playing to their own advantages, tapping into their connections in the borderlands among both the Wabanaki Confederacy and New England colonies to respond to both internal and external pressures with flexibility and finesse.

The Mohawks of Kahnawake showed a similar virtuosity, playing into the British vision of a Seven Nations Confederacy in the St. Lawrence River Valley with their village at its head when it enhanced their influence and resisting it when it threatened to place them in subordination to the Iroquois to their south. Regardless, each worked in their own way to shore up their community’s territorial and political sovereignty in the face of external encroachments.

318 The St. Lawrence Indians’ non-Native neighbors likewise grappled with the external influences over their lives in a variety of ways following Quebec’s conquest by the British. The seigneurial elite, long integral to Quebec’s governance, did their utmost to preserve the privileges of rank under a new regime, a likely prospect given the ideas of

Britain’s governors regarding how best to rule the province. The growing opposition to seigneurial power (a coalition of French Protestants, immigrants from the lower thirteen colonies, and a rising merchant class) fought strenuously to redirect imperial policy away from such ideas, insisting adamantly on the establishment of an elected assembly as a means of influencing provincial affairs. Both those in the assembly party and those allied to the seigneurs who supported the governor’s council claimed to speak for Quebec’s habitant majority, assertions that proved hollow in the face of that group’s many acts of popular resistance over the years following the province’s conquest. Again and again, the habitants of Quebec proved capable of and willing to influence the course of events for their own purposes, establishing the importance of their support as an undeniable fact in provincial and imperial governance. In fact, the council party’s victory with the passage of the Quebec Act of 1774 occurred only within the context of that group’s insistence that their political methods were those most favored by the habitants. The events of the following year put that insistence to the test.

Indeed, while the decade following the Seven Years’ War pushed the debate regarding Quebec’s place forward in myriad and important ways it was the 1775 Quebec

Campaign that ultimately proved a key turning point: testing, fracturing, and reassembling the positions in that debate both in and outside the province’s borders. For

Britain, the Continental Army’s northern invasion in the first year of the colonial

319 rebellion forced those in power to come to terms with the realization that their collaborations with the provincial elite had failed to secure Quebecois loyalties to the empire. For the rebels, it drove them to abandon momentary and halfhearted dreams of a continental union among all the inhabitants of North America regardless of race or culture. The French, meanwhile, either sought to reinforce the outcomes of the invasion in order to sustain ministerial policies developed after the Seven Years’ War or to encourage a second attempt as a means of erasing the noble honor lost in that conflict’s defeat. Among the Native communities of Quebec, the 1775 campaign became a proving ground for determining the relative strength of alliances between those communities and the various confederacies of the surrounding borderlands in addition to eventually compelling most to come to terms with British rule in the province. Finally, the invasion exacerbated the ever-rising political tensions among Quebec’s inhabitants – each party interpreting events to their own advantage – but ultimately produced a lasting antipathy to the province’s southern neighbors that eventually grew into a fundamental pillar of a unified Canadian identity.

While the participants in the 1775 Quebec Campaign were well aware that their actions took place within the context of earlier events, their writings make clear that their view of those events was often skewed more toward wish-fulfilment than reality. British officials and Quebecois elites overestimated the influence that seigneurs had wielded under France’s rule, their political opponents misinterpreted a century of lower-class resistance to seigneurial authority as an indication of support for an assembly, and habitants and Indians looked back on their treatment at French hands through rose colored glasses. This skewing of historical perspectives reveals not only the extent to

320 which misinformation governed the decision-making processes that drove forward the events in question but the profound influence of each group’s worldviews on those processes as well. Those worldviews represented each actor’s vision for the future, whether it be a Quebec governed by French law, British custom, or the actual French.

The invasion of the northern province in the first year of the War of Independence forced those visions to confront the reality of the situation like never before. Britons, seigneurs, and assembly party supporters faced a new awareness of the limitations of their influence over others, habitants and Indians the realization that France never intended to return.

The result was a growing adherence to racial and cultural separation, divisions that sought to wall off challenges to each group’s worldview and insulate them from the very real dangers that threatened their existence in the world itself.

This process was perhaps most impactful for the rebels, however. After decades of soaking up nationalistic British propaganda the colonial rebels were certain they walked in the footsteps of giants, striding forth through the halls of history to echo the deeds of their heroes. Indeed, their accounts of the invasion seem to make a special effort to record those moments when they literally crossed paths with the mythologized past.

“We this day lost one of our sentry” who was “treacherously decoyed and taken,” Abner

Stocking wrote in his diary of the siege of the city of Quebec on November 14, so we

“rallied all our detachment” and “marched to that place of the plains where Wolfe fought his battle” and “gave them a challenge.”70 Simon Fobes recalled the event in similar terms, noting that the rebels had “made the best of our way up the bank to the plains of

70 “Journal of Abner Stocking,” in Kenneth Lewis Roberts, ed., March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnold's Expedition (New York: Doubleday, 1940), 559-560.

321 Abraham, which the brave Wolfe ascended the night of the 12th of September, 1759.”71

Judge John Joseph Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania went into even more detail in his memoirs, describing the route as the one the “immortal Wolfe mounted” and

“surmounted by the eager and gallant spirits of our nation.”72 Treading in the wake of

James Wolfe’s ghost, the soldiers of the Continental Army almost certainly placed themselves firmly in the British general’s shoes. Like him, they no doubt believed, they would vanquish their foes at the city of Quebec and add the northern province to a glorious new empire capable of supplanting the one from which they fought to secede.

The rebel soldiers’ leaders in the Continental Congress were no less prone to participating in such ghost tours. The journal of Charles Carroll of Maryland on his experiences in Quebec as a member of the Congressional committee sent to investigate affairs in the northern province in the spring of 1776 is replete with references to those who trod down his path before him. “At a little distance from this fort, and to the westward of it, is the spot where the Baron Dieskau was defeated by Sir William

Johnson,” he wrote on April 18 as he neared the site of the 1755 Battle of Lake George near Fort George, and “about a quarter of a mile further to the westward [lie] the small remains of Fort William Henry.”73 “Fort William Henry was taken last war by Montcalm and destroyed,” he continued, and a “considerable part” of the British soldiers who surrendered “were murdered by the Indians.”74 “Had our troops attacked Montcalm’s,” he theorized, “they would probably have defeated them” and avoided their eventual fate.75

71 “Journal of Simon Fobes,” in Roberts, ed., 587. 72 “Memoirs of John Joseph Henry,” in Roberts, ed., 352. 73 Charles Carroll, Journal of Charles Carroll of Carrollton during His Visit to Canada in 1776 (Baltimore: Printed by J. Murphy for the Maryland Historical Society, 1876), 63-64. 74 Carroll, Journal, 64. 75 Carroll, Journal, 64.

322 Three days later, Carroll continued on to Fort Ticonderoga, where he was able to catch a glimpse of the “famous lines made by the French in the last war, which [James]

Abercrombie was so infatuated as to attack with musquetry only” in the 1758 Battle of

Carillon, one in which, according to Carroll, “we lost [killed and wounded] near one thousand six hundred men.”76 It was with that thought at the back of his mind that Carroll ended his heritage tour to Quebec. He left from Ticonderoga for the northern province two days later, no doubt feeling himself walking in the literal footsteps of Quebec’s last conquerors.

Carroll’s time in Quebec did much to bring his mind crashing back down to earth.

In June, he was returning to the lower thirteen colonies, thoroughly disillusioned to rebel hopes in the north and assiduously avoiding any further ruminations on historic events in his journal. By June 14, he was confiding to Horatio Gates that the only way he could envision the Continental Army regaining Quebec was if its troops recovered “from the confusion which bad discipline” had caused among them.77 It was a conviction to which he held strong for decades. In December 1812, with an invasion of the northern province by U.S. troops having failed once more, Carroll wrote to his son (another Charles) that whoever the commander of the next attempt was would “without better troops” not be

“more successful than his predecessors in the invasion of Canada.”78 He wasn’t the only one whose previous experiences in Quebec made him view the matter of American military might in 1812 with more caution. After writing of his capture in the 1775 Battle

76 Carroll, Journal, 73. 77 “Charles Carroll to Horatio Gates, June 14, 1776,” in Kate Mason Rowland, ed., The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1737-1832: With His Correspondence and Public Papers, 2 vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1898), 1:174. 78 “Charles Carroll, Sr. to Charles Carroll, Jr., December 30, 1812,” in Rowland, 2:292.

323 of Quebec in his memoirs on the eve of the War of 1812, John Joseph Henry concluded that “cowardice, or a want of good will towards our cause, left us to our miserable fate.”79

“God in his great goodness grant,” he prayed to his readers, that “our countrymen” take part in only “glorious and honorable actions” in “future vicissitudes.”80 Richard

Montgomery’s attempt to take the city of Quebec in 1775 had apparently been an action of neither glory nor honor, an experience that left Henry – like Carroll – with considerable doubts about the future fate of American arms.

Doubts about the United States’ ability to conquer Quebec were not the only thing

Carroll and Henry shared. Both also tellingly referred to the British in the Seven Years’

War with first person collective pronouns like “us” and “our” and “we.” This too would prove a natural casualty of the fight against Britain, one that reveals the processes at play in dividing the rebel colonies from their former empire and establishing them as a nation with a coherent and unifying sense of collective identity. The 1775 Quebec Campaign was an important early step in that process for rebels like Carroll and Henry, one that made the incorporation of the northern province into the new nation not only seem less actionable but less desirable. Because of the Quebec Campaign and its consequences over the course of the rebellion, rebel leaders became less and less enamored of the idea that people of other cultures and races might join them in their new nation and fell back instead on a well-developed sense of cultural and racial superiority. That perceived superiority became the wedge that levered the rebels away from their identities as British subjects and pushed them towards one as American citizens. Many other events played a role in that process, but the Quebec Campaign was pivotal in ways that have often been

79 “Memoir of John Joseph Henry,” in Roberts, ed., 387. 80 “Memoir of John Joseph Henry,” in Roberts, ed., 383.

324 overlooked by modern historians. It was, after all, the event that was among the first to bring rebel notions of inclusion up short.

The Quebec Campaign played a no less pivotal role in the processes of identity formation influencing the other groups that participated in it. The realization during the rebel invasion that the bulk of the Quebecois would not fight for their empire blossomed into a determination among British officials to isolate them until they might be assimilated into a supposedly superior culture, a determination that culminated with the passage of the Constitutional Act in 1791. The failure of rebel arms in their former colony allowed French ministers, meanwhile, to continue pulling their kingdom toward a new vision of empire that flew in the face of popular dreams among the rest of the

France’s subjects that it might one day regain Quebec. Eventually, echoes of those dreams found their way out of the wreckage of the ancien regime, expressed in the overtures made by France’s leaders to Quebec once the king’s ministers had been swept out of power in the Revolution. In part as a result of the Quebec Campaign, Quebec became a symbol for both European powers of what their empires might become, whether it be one capable of assimilating and erasing culturally divergent peoples or liberating the Francophone world from the oppression of its enemies.

The Quebec Campaign was equally influential in pushing those who actually lived within the northern province’s borders toward new group identities. Because of their connections to indigenous communities in the surrounding borderlands, the St.

Lawrence Indians pulled much of northeastern Native America into the War of

Independence through their participation in the Quebec Campaign in the first year. Their continued involvement in the fierce borderlands war that grew out of that first year not

325 only plucked at the seams binding Native alliances in that region together, it ensured their continuous exposure to ideas of racial separation born from the escalation of violence between Indians and rebel colonists. As a result, the Native communities that dotted the

St. Lawrence River Valley emerged from the war more committed than ever to preserving their territorial sovereignty by segregating themselves from their white neighbors. As more and more Native groups flocked north in the wake of treaties with the

United States pushing them out of the borderlands they did likewise, becoming the impetus behind Britain’s abortive efforts to establish an Indian territory in the Treaty of

Ghent in 1814.

While the indigenous dreams that grew out of the first year of the colonial rebellion may have fallen flat in that treaty, those of the Quebecois found their ultimate expression. The 1775 Quebec Campaign had offered Quebec’s Francophone inhabitants to toy with the notion of becoming something new. Their experiences with rebel leaders and soldiers during the invasion of their province, however, drove them to reject that notion outright, a rejection that became the foundation of the Quebecois attachment to

Britain moving forward. British officials could not convince the northern province’s seigneurs to loosen their hold on the reins of power, or persuade the assembly party to abandon its hopes for an elective government, or coax the habitants to provide ungrudging military service. But what they could do after the 1775 Quebec Campaign was rely on a pervasive hatred of Americans. It 1776, that hatred pushed the rebels out of the province. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris gave that hatred a boundary. Three decades later, that hatred fueled the defense against another invasion from the south. In the process, it became part of something beyond what it meant to be elite or lower-class, to

326 support an assembly or to support a council. It became part of what it meant to be

Canadian. The Treaty of Ghent simply reinforced that meaning’s borders.

Thus, the period from Britain’s conquest of Quebec in 1760 to the United States’ final efforts to do likewise in 1814 witnessed the rise of nations in North America that determined their boundaries in latitudes of culture and longitudes of race. After early efforts to incorporate difference into their visions for the world the British, colonial,

French, Native, and Quebecois actors that lived through that period eventually came to stand apart, pinning their hopes for the future and their own survival on a division between themselves and all others. The 1775 Quebec Campaign was a key turning point in this process, melting down the inherent ambiguities of life on the edges of empire and forging more concrete ideas of race and culture on top of them. Without the rebel invasion of the northern province in the first year of the colonial rebellion, that process of identity formation would no doubt have eventually occurred. Because of that invasion, however, the questions underpinning that process were brought to the fore with both immediacy and intensity. Ultimately, the answers that emerged to those questions over the course of the invasion came to serve as the foundation of what it meant to be British,

American, French, Native, and Canadian in the aftermath.

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