Forlorn Hope - Chapter 1
The Continental Congress Letter of October 24th 1774
The Unveiling of Canadian History - Volume 2
FORLORN HOPE
Quebec and Nova Scotia, and the War for Independence, 1775 – 1785
Preface
“According to Washington’s plan, it was to be attempted by light-infantry only, at night, and with the utmost secrecy. Between one and two hundred chosen men and officers were to make the surprise; preceded by a vanguard of prudent, determined men, well commanded, to remove obstructions, secure sentries and drive in the guards. The troops were divided into two columns for simultaneous attacks on opposite sides of the works. One hundred and fifty volunteers formed the vanguard of the right column. One hundred volunteers, the vanguard of the left. In advance of each was a ‘forlorn hope’ of twenty men; it was their desperate duty to remove the abatis … The fierce resistance they met at the outset may be judged by the havoc made in their ‘forlorn hope’; out of twenty-two men, seventeen were either killed or wounded.”
[from Washington Irving’s ‘The Life of Washington’, volume 3]
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At first glance, the term ‘forlorn hope’ might seem to mean, as its literal reading would suggest, a hopeless cause, one that was almost certainly doomed to failure. Almost. But that term was used to refer to a small group of soldiers sent on an extremely risky mission. One may be chosen for it because of your courage or your perseverance, or, because while many around you thought that the cause was hopeless, you did not.
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As a young American Congressman so much more clearly expressed,
“Many free countries have lost their liberty and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.”
[from Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Speech on the Sub-Treasury’, December 26, 1839]
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No Spanish blood I boast, but to
That holy hope of man I cling
Which makes him free of lord and king;
Who asks of me a reason due
I give it to him while I sing:
For I am of that forlorn hope
That is the only hope of man, –
From corner stone to curve and cope
I am a cosmopolitan!
[by George Frederick Cameron]
George Frederick Cameron (Canada’s foremost poet) was born September 24th 1854 at New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, (where a plaque in his honor is mounted at the town post office), and died September 17th 1885 at Millhaven, Ontario - a week shy of his 31st birthday. This poem was written in celebration of Cuba’s declaration of independence. By ‘cosmopolitan’ Cameron meant ‘a world citizen’.
Part 1 - 1775, the Road to Canada
With the passage of the Quebec Act in October 1774, the land policy, the settlement policy and the Indian policy of the Ohio country was now controlled by the military government of Quebec, under the direct rule of the parliament of Britain, which tried to end any colonization plans of the American colonies. The British were now, in essence, siding with the French, who had refused the demand of Virginia Governor Dinwiddie to leave the Ohio country, that was delivered to them by George Washington in November 1753. The American colonists had hoped that the winning of the French and Indian war would stop the French-led Indian attacks on their frontier settlements. The Quebec Act now exposed their entire rear flank to possible Indian raids out of Canada. Again!!!
‘The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775’, by John Trumbull (1786)
Chapter 1 - The Continental Congress Letter of October 24th 1774
On Monday, September 5th 1774, the Continental Congress met at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. It was to sit until October 26th. The people of Canada (renamed the Province of Quebec by the British in 1763), who were still under the seigniorial system and still forced to pay tithes, who were ruled by a British governor and an appointed council with no elected assembly(1) and with its only newspaper under British censorship, sent no delegates to attend the Congress.
However, after the closing of the port of Boston, in order to show their support for the protesting colony, on September 6th the ‘colonial’(2) merchants of Quebec, led by a former citizen of Massachusetts, Jonas Clark Minot, sent 1,000 bushels of wheat to Boston. This gift was acknowledged, with fulsome expressions of gratitude, by the Committee of Donations on October 10th. The ‘colonial’ merchants of Montreal collected subscriptions amounting to ₤100, which was sent to Boston in February.
In October 1774, General Gage, the Commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, asked Major General Carleton, the Governor of the Province of Quebec, to send his two regiments (the 10th and 52nd) from Quebec to Boston.
Congress charged three of its members – Thomas Cushing, Richard Henry Lee and John Dickinson, with the task of preparing an appeal to the Canadiens. On October 24th, the Continental Congress adopted a ‘Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec’ to outline the results of the Congress and to -
“submit it to your consideration, whether it may not be expedient for you to meet together in your several towns and districts, and elect Deputies, who afterwards meeting in a provincial Congress, may chuse Delegates, to represent your province in the continental Congress to be held at Philadelphia on the tenth day of May, 1775”.
The Congress recommended the delegates of Pennsylvania to “superintend the translation, printing, publishing and dispersing them” and recommended the delegates of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York “to assist in and forward the dispersion.” The translation was completed by Eugene du Simitiere, and the printer Fleury Mesplet ran off 2,000 copies. On October 21st, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress adopted a proposal to send an agent -
“to repair to the government of Canada, in order to consult with the inhabitants therof, and to settle a friendly correspondence and agreement with them”.
By early November, news of the actions of the Continental Congress had reached Montreal. The ‘colonists’ – English Canadians – met at the Coffee House to discuss their situation. At a further meeting, a committee of action was set up, including Thomas Walker(3), James Price, John Blake and Isaac Todd.
The committee then went to Quebec and called for a meeting of the ‘colonists’ at the tavern of Miles Prentice. A committee of seven was chosen and instructed to consult with the committee from Montreal. Several American-style town hall meetings, open to all, were held, as well as joint meetings of the two committees. The committees decided to thank the mayor and the city of London for their help in the campaign to prevent the passage of the Quebec Act. They also thanked their advisor in London, Maseres(4), and rewarded his services with a handsome honorarium.
A motion was adopted to address petitions to the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The petitions, dated November 12th 1774, were signed by 185 citizens, and forwarded to Maseres who delivered them in January 1775.
Some of the colonists travelled over the countryside, in the course of trying to buy wheat from the farmers, or travelling from parish to parish as horse dealers, or speaking in the market places, and read them the letter from the Continental Congress. By the middle of November, the letter from the Congress had been dispersed from one end of the province to the other, along with the colonists’ propaganda against the Quebec Act:
that keeping the French religion simply meant forced tithes, which could be increased at any time, and meant a state-religion;
that keeping the old French laws simply meant ridding the courts of jury trials and habeas corpus and keeping the lettres de cachet (banishment or emprisonment);
that keeping French customs simply meant that the seigneurial land rents could be increased at any time, that taxes and duties to pay for expenses and salaries could be raised at any time, and that a forced call to militia duty leaving family and home could happen at any time;
and that no elected representation meant they were “too ignorant to enjoy liberty”.
Most Canadiens had no first-hand knowledge of the Quebec Act, as a french translation of it would not be seen until it was published in the Quebec Gazette on December 8th, four months after the appearance of the English version. Soon, a circular letter also appeared in the Quebec Gazette, signed Le Canadien Patriote, which tried to refute the allegations of the ‘colonists’.
On December 6th, in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress,
“the committee appointed to devise means of keeping up a correspondence between the province, Montreal and Quebec, and of gaining frequent intelligence from thence of their movements, reported, that a committee be appointed to correspond with the inhabitants of Canada. Accordingly, the Hon. Major Hawley, Col. Pomeroy, Mr. Brown, Mr. Samuel Adams, Doct. Warren, Hon. Mr. Hancock and Doct. Church were appointed a committee for that purpose.”
On December 8th, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress ordered “that the expense of transmitting the address to the Canadians be paid by this government”.
On February 15th 1775, in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress,
“the committee appointed to bring in a resolve empowering the committee of correspondence of the town of Boston, to correspond with Quebec, &c., for in behalf of this province, reported; the report was read and accepted, and is as followeth, viz.: Whereas, it appears the manifest design of administration, to engage and secure the Canadians and remote tribes of Indians, for the purpose of harassing and distressing these colonies, and reducing them to a state of absolute slavery: and, whereas, the safety and security of said colonies depend in a great measure, under God, on their firmness, unanimity, and friendship; Therefore, Resolved, That the committee of correspondence for the town of Boston, be and they are hereby directed and empowered, in such way and manner as they shall think proper, to open and establish an intimate correspondence and connection with the inhabitants of the province of Quebec, and that thay endeavour to put the same immediately into execution.”
John Brown, a member of the committee, volunteered and was accepted. He left Boston, escorted by Peleg Sunderland and Winthrop Hoyt – Green Mountain Boys from the New Hampshire Grants, with ₤20 and copies of a letter ‘The Committee of Correspondence of Boston to Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec’ (written by Samuel Adams, dated February 21st) seeking support from Canadians and inviting them to send delegates to the next Continental Congress. On the way to Montreal, they stopped at the forts at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, St. Jean and Chambly, the isolated soldiers of the garrisons welcoming the travellers “buying Canadian horses for the American market”. Brown would count the number of soldiers and note the number of canon at each fort. On March 29th, Brown would send a letter to the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence about his trip to Montreal, that the Caghnawaga Indians were refusing to fight with the British, and that “there was no prospect of Canada sending delegates to the Continental Congress … should the English join in the non-importation agreement, the French(5) would immediately monopolize the Indian trade”.
On April 4th, the colonists gathered at the Montreal Coffee House to hear John Brown read the letter from Boston and speak in support of it. Thomas Walker also spoke at the meeting and recommended that a committee be set up to correspond with Massachusetts, and to select two delegates to the next Continental Congress at Philadelphia on May 10th. But these recommendations could not be agreed to by both the British and the American colonists, and so they were not adopted.
On April 28th, a reply to Massachusetts was written by Thomas Walker, John Welles, James Price, and William Haywood. It offered the fact that the colonists “have neither numbers nor wealth sufficient to do you any essential service”(6), and desired whether English delegates would be accepted without entering into the non-importation or non-exportation of British goods. They said that, the Indians of Canada “know their own interests better, than to interfere as a nation, in this family quarrel: for let which side will, prevail, they are sure in that case to be the victims”.
On May 1st 1775 – the day the Quebec Act came into force – visitors to the Place d’Armes in Montreal saw the bust of George III with its face blackened, and suspended about its neck was a rosary of potatoes(7) with a wooden cross and the inscription ‘Behold the Pope of Canada or the English fool’.
Meanwhile, on April 19th the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired at the battle of Concord and Lexington.
Footnotes for Chapter 1.
(1) The people of Canada had never had an elected assembly, as the Estates-General in France had not sat since 1614. The province of Nova Scotia first elected its legislative assembly in 1758, and even Saint John’s Island (P.E.I.) first elected its legislative assembly in 1773. The British did not feel the Canadiens were ready for the ‘calamity’ of elected legislature.
(2) The ‘colonists’ were Britons and Americans who had immigrated to Canada after 1763.
(3) On December 6th 1764, after a dispute involving the billeting of troops in Montreal which resulted in the jailing of a British captain, 20 men of the 28th regiment, with blackened faces, burst into the home of one of the leading justices of the peace in the case, Thomas Walker, a former Bostonian now in business in Montreal, severely beat him and cut off one of his ears. In 1767, a draft petition for an elected assembly was submitted by Walker to the military governor of the province of Quebec, Carleton.
(4) In November 1773, a committee of merchants sent Thomas Walker and Zachary Macaulay to London to petition Lord Dartmouth for an elected assembly. While there, they also enlisted the help of Francis Maseres, the former attorney-general of Quebec 1766-1769.
(5) The French Canadiens tended to remain neutral, perhaps remembering back to the capture of Quebec in 1759 when the British troops carried off or destroyed all the livestock and produce of those Canadiens still serving the French, while at the same time the French troops captured and brutally beat any habitant providing provisions to the British.
(6) The colonists estimated, at that time, the French population of Quebec at 75,000 and the English population of Quebec at 3,000.
(7) In what may be argued as the one positive outcome of British occupation of Canada, Governor Murray introduced the potato to Quebec farmers.
[next week - chapter 2 - The Continental Congress Letter of May 29th 1775]
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For those who may wish to support my continuing work on ‘The Unveiling of Canadian History’, you may purchase my books, that are available as PDFs and Paperback (on Amazon) at the Canadian Patriot Review :
Volume 1 – The Approaching Conflict, 1753 – 1774.
Volume 2 – Forlorn Hope – Quebec and Nova Scotia, and the War for Independence, 1775 – 1785.
Volume 3 – The Storming of Hell – the War for the Territory Northwest of the Ohio, 1786 – 1796.
And hopefully,
Volume 4 – Ireland, Haiti, and Louisiana – the Idea of a Continental Republic, 1797 – 1804,
may also appear in print, in the near future, while I continue to work on :
Volume 5 – On the Trail of the Treasonous, 1804 - 1814.