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Guy Carleton - the story of how close Canadians came to becoming Americans
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Guy Carleton, an English gentleman of the old school, fought along side of General Wolfe when he defeated the French and between 1759 and 1766 he won high honours for skill and bravery in Britain’s wars. In 1766 King George the third, appointed Carleton Governor of Quebec and charged him to Anglicize the newly won colony. In his first year Guy Carleton knew that policy was doomed.
With London busy concentrating on what was going on in the Thirteen Colonies, Carleton was left to work out the same problems but in Canadian terms. In his Series Hutchison notes that Carleton wrote to London -
"barring catastrophe shocking to think of, this country must to the end of time be peopled by the Canadian race, who have already taken such firm root and got so great a height that any new stock transplanted will be totally hid, except in the towns of Quebec and Montreal."
He was wrong about that because he did not expect the American Revolution and its backwash into Canada.
How could he foresee that the French-speaking Canadians of Quebec would soon be a minority in an unimaginable new-state? For the present he had only the fist known fact to work with — the fact that the Canadians would be themselves — and it was enough to reverse the entire policy of Britain in America.
IN 1775, after inviting representatives from Quebec to join the revolution and being ignored, the Continental Congress prepared to invade Canada to shut down any possible British thrust southward.
While the Congress argued and delayed, Ethan Allen, a towering Frontiersman and leader of the Green Mountain Boys, had been conducting a private war with the authorities of New York. Now he took the war against Canada into his own hands.
Across Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga he was joined by a horse dealer and amateur soldier, Benedict Arnold. They mustered altogether two hundred and thirty men.
The great fortress was held by about forty unsuspecting troops who freely allowed spies to inspect their lack of preparation.The Americans crossed the lake in the first light of May 10, 1775, the sentry's musket missed fire, the commander was awakened by a knock on his door and the hoarse voice of Allen ordering him to surrender "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" Or so Allen told the story afterwards. The commander surrendered in his dressing gown.
Allen's partner, Seth Warner, captured Crown Point and its thirteen surprised soldiers. Arnold seized Fort St. Johns on the Richelieu in the same bloodless fashion.
The American Revolution controlled the historic invasion corridor at the moment when the Continental Congress was solemnly resolving "that no Expedition or Incursion ought to be undertaken or made, by any Colony or Body of Colonies, against or into Canada." Philadelphia changed its mind within a few days and commissioned General Schuyler to "pursue any measures in Canada that may have a tendency to promote the peace and security of these colonies," always providing that "it will not be disagreeable to the Canadians."
By Mid-August the rebels had more than fifteen- hundred men ready for the invasion. The supreme commander was a former British army Captain, Richard Montgomery who wrote his wife and described his troops as “such a set of pusillanimous wretches never was collected.”
Following the strategy of Wolfe, their plan was to capture Montreal and besiege Quebec.
The right wing of the double assault under Benedict Arnold - Carleton called him “that horse Jockey” – was to strike overland from the southeast. In September Arnold's force of hundred picked men was dragging bateaux up the Kennebec. The toiling colonials included some of the crack frontier fighters of the Seven Years' War and an undistinguished character called Aaron Burr, of whom more would be heard.Canada's old friend, northern winter, caught the expedition on an overgrown, swampy and almost impassable trail. Three hundred starving men turned back. The dauntless remainder pushed forward, eating dogs and moccasins, shot down the Chaudiere by raft and reached Levis, opposite Quebec, on November 8. After one of the most desperate marches on record, Arnold stood where Wolfe had stood and prepared to duplicate his strategy without his resources or his luck.
Montgomery had little trouble taking the Richelieu forts and moved on to Montreal. Carleton knew he had little chance to defend the town as most of his soldiers had deserted and his Indian Allies had fled. His only hope was to escape to Quebec.
The Americans had blocked the roads on both sides so he was forced to go by boat and that meant passing through American blockade. On November the eleventh, along with a hundred and thirty men in eleven boats, they slipped down the river in the dark of night.
The English gentleman quickly dressed himself as a Canadian habitant, in a tasseled red bonnet, grey homespun clothes, a gay sash and moccasins. Thus disguised he boarded the whale-boat of a French Canadian riverman named Bouchette, better known for his exploits as the "Wild Pigeon."The Wild Pigeon knew his business. His crew rowed silently down-river in the night, oars muffled, and at the narrow passage between Isle St. Ignace and the Isle du Pas, a few yards from Arnold's battery, paddled with then-hands. Now Wolfe's luck returned to rescue Carleton. The American sentries heard nothing.
Carleton's escape on the St. Lawrence, like Washington's on the Ohio, was to produce large consequences. Bouchette, the Wild Pigeon, had played his little part in the course of human events and, with many other vital players, was forgotten.>P> "On the 19th," says the diary of Thomas Ainslie, customs collector at Quebec, "to the unspeakable joy of the friends of the Government, and to the utter dismay of the abettors of Sedition and Rebellion, General Carleton arrived . . . We saw our Salvation in his Presence."
Arnold captured the Canadian flotilla up the river but the big prize had slipped through his fingers.
Seven years after helping Wolfe capture Quebec Carleton soon realized he had little to work with – less than even Montcalm. First, he expelled all the Canadians who refused to fight. That left him with about 5,000 citizens, 350 British regulars, 400 sailors and350 Canadian militia.,P>
About 1,300 men must face the resources of the Continental Congress, hold Quebec under its fourth siege or, in losing it, probably lose Canada to the Revolution. As so many times before, a scant square mile of rock beside the river contained the destiny of ax least half the continent.Montgomery took Montreal and joined Arnold at Quebec. The two American generals surveyed, in their shrunken army, the tragic military miscalculations of the Continental Congress—and something more, and Philadelphia’s total miscalculations of the Canadian nature. Desertion and disease had reduced the American force on the Plains of Abraham to about a thousand men. Still, Montgomery, knowing war but not Canada, was certain that the Canadians would surrender. He had that on the word of the Philadelphia philosophers and who could doubt it? Therefore, he would "eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or in hell." He ate it in his own camp. He would eat only seven more dinners in this world.
A written demand for Quebec's surrender was tied to an arrow and shot over the walls. It informed Carleton that Quebec was "incapable of defense, manned by a motley crew of sailors, the greatest part our friends, or of citizens who wish to see us within their walls and a few of the worst troops who ever styled themselves soldiers." The townspeople were warned that Quebec would soon be a "city in flames, carnage, confusion, plunder, all caused by a general courting ruin to avoid his shame."
……. Carleton paid no attention to the message by arrow. The Canadians of his garrison appeared to have little wish for liberation. And in their loyalty under siege Canada unwittingly was turning the critical corner of its future.
It did not find Carleton unprepared. His garrison was in good order. The Canadian militia stood with unquestioning discipline beside the British regulars—for the first time, but by no means the last. Unity of the two races under arms might mean Quebec's salvation now. It meant much more later.
If it could survive this night it might turn the tide of sentiment among the wavering Canadians. Though no one thought of it then, the men of Quebec might begin, for all their puny numbers, to demonstrate the possibility of a biracial state.
The American plan was for Montgomery to round Cape Diamond and attack the lower town from the St. Lawrence bank while Arnold, attacking from the north would meet Montgomery and the joint forces would scale the heights to capture the garrison.
Montgomery and five hundred men crept out of Wolfe's Cove, by a narrow trail along the river bluffs, in the teeth of a fine, cutting snow. This time no Vergor but an alert guard of fitty British and Canadians, under John Coffin, stood at the barricade of Pres-de-Ville with four small guns. They waited in silence and saw nothing but the snow, heard only the guns on the Plains.Suddenly vague figures appeared not twenty yards away. A man crawled forward, looked at the barricade and retreated. Still the guard kept silent in their baited trap. Now they could see a knot of Americans huddled together in consultation. Montgomery waved his sword and shouted: "Come on, brave lads, Quebec is ours!" As he charged the trap closed. From a distance of ten yards the four guns of Pres-de-Ville fired their single volley of grapeshot. The foremost Americans lay on the snow. No second volley was needed. The surviving attackers fled.”M/b>
In the North Arnold’s force of six hundred men with “Liberty or Death” pinned to their hats, suffered heavy losses as they reached the barricades of Sault-au-Matelot. Arnold was hit in the leg and within a few minutes fainted from loss of blood.
Led by Daniel Morgan, the Americans ran into a cul-de-sac and were cut to pieces by the snipers stationed at every house window.
The Americans bravely fought on, but the odds were too great and when Carleton’s reserves rushed in from the American’s rear flank, Morgan surrendered, Quebec was saved.
The following spring, Ben Franklin, in an attempt to sell of Canada’s place in the free union of the Thirteen Colonies, set up a printing press in Montreal and he”……concentrated the ablest journalistic mind of the continent on persuasive propaganda.” He failed to sway the Canadians.
The survivors of Montgomery’s army could maintain the futile siege of Quebec through the winter.
Franklin could turn out his tracts, manifestoes and homespun logic in the Montreal cellar, but the doubtful scales of Canadian sentiment had tilted quietly and forever in favor of England, not because the Canadians loved it more but the Americans and their democracy less.On these humble and invisible scales political balance of the continent tilted also – and much further than the British government of the Continental Congress yet supposed.
The revolution had lost it’s fourteenth state and America’s northern half, thanks to the foresight of a grave English gentleman of the old School.
Excerpts from “The Struggle for the Border” by Bruce Hutchison - Maclean’s Magazine, March 5, 1955