Failed Canada campaign helped push colonies toward independence
A 1775 invasion of Quebec collapsed, but historian Sarah M.S. Pearsall says it helped move the rebelling colonies toward independence.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
3 min read
The American drive for independence was shaped in part by a failed 1775 effort to pull Canada into the rebellion, according to historian Sarah M.S. Pearsall of Johns Hopkins University. Pearsall argues that the defeat in Quebec exposed the limits of the colonial war effort and strengthened the case for a formal break with Britain.
In an account published by The Conversation and drawn from her book “Freedom Around the Globe,” Pearsall says the familiar story of 1776 leaves out a wider British imperial setting. Britain’s holdings in North America included far more than the 13 rebelling colonies, including Quebec and other territories acquired after the Seven Years’ War.
Why Quebec mattered
Quebec became part of the British Empire under the 1763 Treaty of Paris after Britain defeated France near Quebec City at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, Pearsall writes. British officials then had to decide how to govern French and Indigenous Catholics whose legal and religious traditions differed from those of Britain’s Protestant colonists.
The Quebec Act of 1774 allowed Catholic worship and preserved modified French law in Canada, according to Pearsall. Many colonists to the south, especially Protestants in New England, viewed the law and Quebec’s Catholic population with suspicion.
Even so, leaders in the 13 colonies tried to recruit Quebec into their cause. Pearsall writes that the First Continental Congress sent a message to French-origin residents of Quebec inviting them to join what one supporter called a union of 14 provinces. Congress had the appeal translated into French and ordered 1,000 copies for distribution in Canada.
Quebec’s governor complained in early 1775 that the message was unsettling the population by raising doubts about British authority, according to Pearsall. On May 1, 1775, the day the Quebec Act took effect, a marble statue of King George III in Montreal was vandalized.
Letters gave way to an invasion
The Second Continental Congress also appealed to Canadians, again in French, and urged them to join the defense of “common liberty,” Pearsall writes. By later in 1775, the rebelling colonies turned from persuasion to force.
George Washington described Quebec as vulnerable in September 1775, according to Pearsall, and gave Gen. Richard Montgomery command of the Canadian campaign. Montgomery captured Montreal in late November, and the vandalized statue of George III was later beheaded as soldiers cheered.
The campaign then moved toward Quebec City at a poor time of year. Pearsall writes that commanders pressed ahead because many soldiers’ enlistments were set to expire on Dec. 31. Montgomery himself said his men were “half-starved and half-naked,” and a blizzard worsened conditions during the assault.
Montgomery was killed in the opening hours of the Dec. 31 attack. Pearsall says about one-third of the Continental soldiers became prisoners of war, including private Jeremiah Greenman, who later wrote about his bewilderment at being captured.
Defeat changed the argument
The failed Quebec campaign left the Continental Army short of supplies, weakened by smallpox and struggling with credit problems, Pearsall writes. She says the conduct of hungry and angry soldiers also helped turn Canadians away from the rebel cause.
Later diplomacy led by Benjamin Franklin did not repair the damage, according to Pearsall. One Continental officer later blamed “Mismanagement” for the loss of Canadian support.
News of Montgomery’s death stirred sympathy in the colonies. Pearsall notes that Maryland later named Montgomery County for him, and that Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” published in January 1776, dedicated some profits to mittens for troops headed to Quebec.
Pearsall argues that the Canadian defeat helped create momentum for independence because foreign help became more urgent. France and Spain were more likely to support an independent country fighting Britain than a colonial uprising, and their later aid in money, arms and troops helped the United States turn from defeat toward victory.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.