The fate of Québec during the American Revolution

And why the Patriots failed to garner critical support to their cause in the province

British and Canadian forces attacking Arnold's column in the Sault-au-Matelot, Charles William Jefferys

Since this article might be truncated in the email format to be read in its entirety, I invite readers to access the online version on my Substack page.

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In the years leading up to the American Revolution in the 1770s, representatives of the First Continental Congress¹ wrote to their fellow English subjects in Canada to make a consequential proposal. With discussions of independence from Britain already underway among the Thirteen Colonies and the groundwork for a future confederation of states being laid, this official communication was only the first in a series of letters that clearly articulated the rationale of the Patriot leaders to encourage their northern neighbors to join their efforts. Notably, through English merchants in Québec, multiple copies of this first letter dated 26 October 1774 were distributed in the colony and served as a formal proposition explaining the political philosophy behind the movement.

Detailing the principles of what they considered the ideals of an enlightened government—life, liberty, rights to property, and political representation—the authors hoped their neighbors would rapidly reach the same conclusion as them and overthrow British rule. Thus, without force or menace at first, Congress ended its initial plea by stating,

“we do not ask you, by this address, to commence acts of hostility against the government of our common Sovereign. We only invite you to consult your own glory and welfare, and not to suffer yourselves to be inveigled or intimidated by infamous ministers so far, as to become the instruments of their cruelty and despotism, but to unite with us in one social compact, formed on the generous principles of equal liberty, and cemented by such an exchange of beneficial and endearing offices as to render it perpetual.”²

Based on their extensive experience with imperial Britain, the tone of the letter clearly revealed that American Patriots sought to caution the inhabitants of the Province of Québec about the dangers of unquestioning loyalty to their new rulers.

The following spring, beginning in June 1775, after multiple intelligence scouting missions that were deemed fruitful, the Second Continental Congress authorized a series of military campaigns into Québec. Initially successful in the southern region through Lake Champlain and into Montréal, the American Patriots, under the leadership of Colonel Benedict Arnold, ultimately failed to capture Québec City. British soldiers, with the help of voluntary local militia, proved strong enough to defend against the American invasion. Thus, by May 1776, it became evident that local support for Congress’s intention of ousting British forces from newly formed Québec was largely insufficient.³ The series of letters sent to the inhabitants of the province, along with the propaganda efforts of local merchants across the countryside proved unpersuasive. Loyalty to British rule remained strong.

Why did loyalty to Britain erode enough in the Thirteen Colonies, paving the way for independence, but not in Québec? What explains this difference in outcome?

Since the 1780s, these questions have unsurprisingly generated a variety of interpretations from historians. While the historiography of this period remains rich—since it marked a critical juncture where North America’s history could have diverged entirely—it still lacks a holistic view of the events, such as one could gain by comparing the political cultures between America and Québec during the pre-revolutionary era. Compared to the socio-political conditions present in the Thirteen Colonies prior to 1776, the equivalent preconditions were missing in Québec. Practical experience in self-governance being the prime example. While historians have emphasized that the clerical elite exerted significant influence over the inhabitants of Québec, the absence of a long established civil political elite is also a notable factor to account for.

Thus, this essay aims to bridge that gap by demonstrating how the politico-cultural mindset of the general population in British Québec, in contrast to their southern counterparts, had not yet matured enough to support a successful revolutionary campaign. Without delving too deeply into psychohistory, the present paper will focus on the social dynamics of post-Seven Years’ War Québec and its cultural impact on the local population.

When examining the historiography of these events, much has been researched and written on the causes and triggers of the American Revolution extension into the Province of Québec. Historians such as Charles H. Metzger⁴ and Gayle K. Brown⁵, have examined the conflict’s religious entanglements and the Roman Catholic Church’s impact. Through this religious framework, or lens, these scholars have tried to understand how the Catholic-Protestant dichotomy on the continent have shaped great power relations. Other scholars such as Pierre Monette⁶ and Marcel Trudel⁷, interpreting the events through a French-Canadian perspective, have argued either that language barriers and lack of education blocked ideas from reaching the population sufficiently, or that the clerical elite’s dominance persisted well into the late 1800s. Another group of historians, like Mark R. Anderson⁸ and Donald Fyson⁹, have utilized respectively a military and social framework in their analysis to understand the failure in bringing Québec into the fight for independence.

In the centuries that separates us from these events, the religious angle of interpretation has garnered considerable attention from historians. In part because many of them also have a religious academic background. In any case, one of the sources that gathered significant interest over the years, and which addresses the religious factor in the conflict, was the book written by Metzger in 1937. Metzger claims that the Quebec Act of 1774, due to the toleration it provided to Catholics in the newly acquired British province, infuriated Protestant Americans to the point of triggering the American Revolution.¹⁰ This angle of analysis has been a dominant one in the field, but with closer scrutiny, the thesis put forward by Metzger can still be challenged on several fronts. From his own admission, while prejudices against the Roman Catholic Church were prevalent at the time, measuring religious intolerance and bigotry is far from a perfect science. Besides, the simple fact that the Continental Congress demonstrated obvious tolerance in the letters to Québec contradicts his claims. Unless the author felt the American offer was disingenuous. As a reminder on this specific point, Congress did write the following in its first letter:

“We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation, to imagine, that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us.”¹¹

In addition, no primary source of the era seems to reveal that this animosity towards Catholics affected the perception of the inhabitants besides the Clergy.

Aside from the claims that tolerance for Catholicism triggered the American Revolution, many historians on the Canadian side have also argued and emphasized the influence of religion on the masses during the conflict. In his book Rendez-vous manqué avec la Révolution américaine, Monette offers an overarching argument that is mostly religious in nature. While acknowledging that not all Canadians opposed the American Patriot’s political project—primarily the Clergy and the seigniorial elite—Monette still suggests that these two groups wielded considerable influence on the masses, farmers, and small merchant class.¹² However, while the argument is valid to some extent, no primary sources make the demonstration without a doubt that this fact alone explains the stifling of support towards the American proposal. If anything, the opposite might be closer to the truth since even the Governor of the Province at the time, Guy Carleton,

“was mistaken about the influence exerted by the seigneurs and the clergy over the lower classes, whose behavior, since they freed themselves from the fear and harshness of the authority that once weighed upon them, is no longer restrained and reveals, on every occasion, their aversion and hatred for those they were accustomed to regarding with terror.”¹³

While Americans had been discussing Enlightenment ideas for decades already, notably through writers such as Thomas Paine, the same was not the case in the province of Quebec post-1763. Commoners were subject to a dominant clerical elite during this period, but the true extent of its influence has often been exaggerated by historians. Though it is a valid point to state the masses expressed a form of benevolent neutrality during the American invasion, the journal of Simon Sanguinet as seen above—a contemporary of the events—reminds us that even the sitting Governor Carleton realized that type of influence was fading.

In closing on the religious angle of the conflict, Gayle K. Brown’s 1993 article provides some clarification on the possible impact of anti-Catholic sentiments to the outcome of the American military campaigns in Québec. The argument is particularly useful to the present inquiry since it addressed the “sympathy variable” of regular people. Brown reminds us that in October 1774, Congress also sent a second letter to the British people with a contradictory message regarding the Catholic faith. Thus, did Congress strategically utilize a form of duplicity in preparation for the conflict to come? Maybe. But regardless of the answer, which is difficult to assess, the important aspect is the fact that “Canadians who wanted to remain within the British empire made a point of publicizing Congress's address to the British people in an effort to counteract sympathy for the patriot cause.”¹⁴ Again, such internal communication or propaganda surely influenced segments of the local population but one must be careful not to overstate its importance, since most inhabitants were illiterate.

Considering the religious lens and arguments are not robust enough to account for the lack of support for a continent-wide American Revolution in the 1770s, what variables or conditions might provide a better explanation of the context? In his 2013 book on the battle for Québec during the revolution, historian Mark R. Anderson contributed to the historiography by identifying a few additional factors that explains the failure to generate sufficient support for independence from Québec inhabitants. From his perspective, Anderson addresses the possible influence of the Catholic leadership in the province, but since his primary sources from the Church were limited, his final argument stands on “inadequate intelligence, psychological projection of “American” political values, and military miscalculation led the United Colonies to launch their inept Canadian invasion.”¹⁵ Most importantly, Anderson stresses that in every revolutionary attempt, three groups are always present: the “rebels”, the loyalists to the regime, and more importantly, the masses that are usually neutral until a critical mass picks a side. The way this third group reacts as the events move along, generally decides the outcome of a revolution. In the case at hand, Anderson stresses that local Patriot supporters in Québec did not have a strong enough political structure already in place to sustain the revolutionary movement within the population in the early days. He therefore supports the argument of this essay, where I assert that minimal practical political experience is a prerequisite for a successful revolution.

Adding to this train of thought, the 2012 collection of essays—Revisiting 1759—provides some illuminating perspectives.¹⁶ Among the many texts in the book, the one written by Donald Fyson is the most interesting for the current angle of interpretation. Without understating the trauma of the British Conquest of Québec, Fyson argues that the period between the fall of Québec and the American Revolution was mostly characterized by mutual adaptation. Professor of history, Fyson, demonstrates through a series of examples that the relationship between French-Canadians and their new British administrators was far more complex and nuanced than the binary interpretations typically offered by past scholars. It was not solely based on acrimonious relationships. Due to their insufficient numbers, the English elite were compelled to incorporate many French-Canadians into the local administration, providing a potent illustration of their mutual adaptation. With enhanced exposure to political participation in the decade preceding the Revolution, the local population was just starting to acquire enough experience and exposure to the “political game”. Much like the failed attempts of the French revolutionaries to impose republics unto their neighbors through force, the historical record tends to demonstrate that republican ideals need to build organically within a society for it to structure itself into concrete political institutions that can stand the test of time.¹⁷ The Québec British subjects were thus not at the same stage of political maturity, so to speak. And the Clerical elite and seigniors were not the sole group putting the brakes about the American proposal, but also simple compatriots.

For example, Marcel Trudel’s La Tentation Américaine offers some eye-opening accounts of contemporaries of the events. In a 1775 letter from a Faubourg habitant of Montréal, addressed to the American general Richard Montgomery, the message from the author demonstrates how local rebels did not feel sufficiently emboldened to openly vocalize their support to the patriots. The author of the letter mentions how even his own compatriots do not see in a positive light the American attempt to crush imperial British governance. He goes on by writing that

“silence itself was suspect, and the reward for anyone who dared to think and say what he thought was prison, chains, and at the very least, the contempt and indignation of the citizens.”¹⁸

The fall of New France into the hands of the British, so close in time to 1775, apparently did not generate widespread resentment among the population sufficient enoughto unite them against their new rulers.

Even though the Catholic Church, loyal to the British regime, took somewhat advantage of a poor and uneducated population (as expressed by the quote of Bishop Briand below), nothing confirms the influential success of such letters. Short on civil elites since the fall of New France, the bulk of French-Canadian commoners and farmers did overly rely on the Clergy for guidance, but the population was largely seeking accommodation as argued by Dyson above. Below the excerpt from Bishop Briand from May 1775. It tells a compelling story about the Church’s vision:

“Your oaths, your religion, impose upon you an indispensable obligation to defend with all your power your country and your King. Therefore, dear Canadians, close your ears, and do not listen to the seditious ones who seek to make you unhappy and to stifle in your hearts the feelings of submission to your legitimate superiors that education and religion had engraved there.”¹⁹

When one explores primary sources of the period, the absence of certain types of documents are as telling as the ones present. Regarding newspapers for instance, what makes the published papers up until May 1776 particularly interesting is not solely what we find in them, but also what we do not find. For instance, newspapers had yet to be prevalent in the colony and were just taking root in this transitional epoch of post-French regime into British control since 1763. Unlike the situation of the Thirteen Colonies, printers were rare in Québec. The Québec Gazette, a government-backed publication which essentially focused on providing foreign news, advertisements, and official court orders, provided little space to disseminate Enlightenment values to the local population.²⁰ Influential papers like La Minerve or Le Canadien, which eventually published intellectual political discourse, only came later in the early nineteenth century.

The transition period since the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 forged differently the mentality of British subjects in Québec compared to British colonies of the Atlantic seaboard. And it is precisely aspects of those mentalités that impacted the ultimate outcome. In contrast to their mostly Protestant counterparts in the American colonies, late eighteenth-century Canadiens had fewer elites to rely on since the conquest of New France, because many of them returned to France. Trapped between the new British regime on one side, and the loyal Catholic Church under their new masters, the society was lacking maturity level in terms of readiness for revolution. Even if many local rebels joined the American patriots, abstract ideals did not have time to take root sufficiently since the Treaty of Paris.

Compared to the political conditions in British North America that contributed to the successful creation of a republic in America, an additional historical element was undoubtedly the British policy of “Salutary Neglect” in the early eighteenth century. Essentially, this approach involved a lax and unofficial oversight of the North American colonies’ internal affairs, with imperial regulations not being consistently applied. Wim Klooster notes, “Because the Crown relied on these representative assemblies to fund local governance and imperial conflicts, it could not impose its policies on the mainland with force.”²¹ A situation much in contrast to the Province of Québec, where this experience in self-governance did not occur in the preceding decades.

Interestingly, the renowned French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville, though he visited Lower Canada a few decades later, offers a compelling perspective on the customs of the people he encountered. And since the credibility of Tocqueville does not need enhancement, what he wrote about the mentalités of the French-Canadians is also worth considering for the present argument.

“We do not feel here in any way this mercantile spirit which appears in all the actions as in all the speeches of the American. The reason of the Canadians is little cultivated, but it is simple and straightforward, they undoubtedly have less ideas than their neighbours, but their sensitivity seems more developed; they have a life of heart, the others of head.”²²

In conclusion, unlike the American protestant colonists of English descent, the French Catholic Canadians had antagonistic perceptions towards American independence. They were trapped in a crossfire of competing economic interests, shifting political opportunities, and religious loyalties, which made their decision even more complicated. Besides a minority of motivated Canadians in the Patriots’ camp, most groups seemed content with their current situation. The Clergy retained their elite status with the provisions of the Québec Act. Members of the liberal professions enjoyed newly acquired positions in the administrative apparatus. And the general population witnessed growing living conditions under British rule. In short, the fruits were not ripe for many of them to embark on a revolutionary process at this point, so close to 1759. Decades later, during the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38, the now politically mature people of Lower Canada demanded legislative autonomy from Britain. Proof that only a few decades after tasting the practical exercise of some level of political power, they seemed ready to ask for more.

Historian Wim Klooster’s comparative reflections on the different Atlantic revolutions of the eighteenth century opened broader questions worth exploring for the present inquiry. While Klooster does not refer specifically to the Québec case, his argument pertaining to France could also explain why Québec failed to garner sufficient political will to thrust the conflict into an alternative outcome. Thus, in contrast to colonists in British North America who exercised power from an early stage after the initial settlements, Canadian experience on the contrary was characterized by lower-density establishments, Ancien régime type feudal system, relied more heavily on foreign governance, and the crown’s representative in New France.²³

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1. Meeting of delegates from 12 of the 13 American colonies, held in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774. It convened to address grievances against British policies, ultimately drafting a petition to King George III and calling for a boycott of British goods.

2. “Continental Congress to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec,” Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774—1789, edited by Worthington C. Ford et al. 34 vols (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904) —37, Volume 1, Chapter 14, Document 123, accessed January 17, 2025, http://presspubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch14s12.html

3. Marcel Trudel, La Tentation Américaine, 1774-1783 (Québec: Septentrion, 2006), 125.

4. Charles H. Metzger, The Quebec Act. A primary Cause of the American Revolution (New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1936).

5. Gayle K. Brown, “The Impact of the Colonial AntiCatholic Tradition on the Canadian Campaign, 1775-1776,” Journal of Church and State 35, no. 3 (1993).

6. Pierre Monette, Rendez-vous manqué avec la Révolution américaine : les adresses aux habitants de la province de Québec diffusées à l'occasion de l'Invasion américaine de 1775-1776 (Montréal : Québec Amérique, 2007).

7. Trudel, La Tentation Américaine, 2006.

8. Mark R. Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776 (Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2013).

9. Ollivier Hubert and François Furstenberg, eds, Entangling the Quebec Act: Transnational Contexts, Meanings, and Legacies in North America and the British Empire. Vol. 2. (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).

10. Metzger, The Quebec Act. A primary Cause of the American Revolution.

11. “Continental Congress to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec,” 1774.

12. Monette, Rendez-vous manqué avec la Révolution américaine, 2007.

13. Simon Sanguinet, L'invasion du Canada par les Bastonnois - Journal de M. Sanguinet (Québec: Editeur officiel du Québec, 1975), 137. Collections de BAnQ.

14. Brown, “The Impact of the Colonial AntiCatholic Tradition on the Canadian Campaign, 1775-1776,” 566.

15. Anderson, The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony, 353.

16. Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, Revisiting 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 190-217.

17. Janet L. Polasky, Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).

18. Trudel, La Tentation Américaine,102. (Translated in English from its original French version)

19. Trudel, La Tentation Américaine, 53.

20. “The Quebec Gazette,” Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec (BAnQ), https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/.

21. Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World, New Edition: A Comparative History (New York: NYU Press, 2018) 15.

22. Alexis de Tocqueville, Regards sur le Bas-Canada (Montréal, Éditions Typo, 2003), 180.

23. Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World.