Though the United States, in the war and in the treaty which followed it, attained in the fullest possible measure the objects for which they had contended, it is a question whether, of all the countries concerned in the war, Canada did not really gain most, notwithstanding the hardship which she suffered in respect of the boundary line between the Dominion and the United States. For Canada to have a future as a nation, it was necessary, in the first place, that she should be cut adrift from the French colonial system as it existed in the eighteenth century. This was secured as the result of the Seven Years’ War. In the second place, it was necessary that she should not be absorbed by and among the British colonies in North America. This end was attained, and could only be attained by what actually happened, viz., by the British colonies in North America ceasing to belong to Great Britain, while Canada was kept within the circle of the British Empire. Had the United States remained British possessions, Canada must eventually have come into line with them, and been more or less lost among the stronger and more populous provinces. The same result would have followed, had the British Government entertained, as their emissary Oswald did, Franklin’s proposal that Canada should be ceded to the United States. It would have followed too, in all probability, if Canada had been left at the time independent both of Great Britain and of the United States, for she would have been too weak to stand alone. The result of the war was to give prominence and individuality to Canada as a component part of the British Empire; to bring in a strong body of British colonists not displacing but supplementing the French Canadians and antagonistic to the United States from which they were refugees; to revive the instinct of self-preservation which in old days had kept Canada alive, and which is the mainspring of national sentiment, by again directly confronting her with a foreign Power; and at the same time to give her the advantage of protection by and political connexion with what was still to be the greatest sea-going and colonizing nation of the world. The result of the War of American Independence was to make the United States a great nation; but it was a result which, whether with England or without, they must in any case have achieved. The war had also the effect, and no other cause could have had a like effect, of making possible a national existence for Canada, which possibility was to be converted into a living and a potent fact by the second American war, the war of 1812.
[58] Shortt and Doughty, p. 195.
[59] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 196-9.
[60] Ib., pp. 205-7.
[61] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 227-8.
[62] Shortt and Doughty, p. 196.
[63] See above, p. 67 note.
[64] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 208-10.
[65] Letter to Shelburne, December 24, 1767, Shortt and Doughty, p. 203.
[66] Shortt and Doughty, p. 454. See also note to p. 377. Carleton had a much better opinion than most people of the administration of justice under the old French régime. In his examination before the House of Commons on the Quebec Bill, he was asked, ‘Do you know from the Canadians themselves, what sort of administration of justice prevailed under the French Government, whether pure or corrupt?’ His answer was, ‘Very pure in general. I never heard complaints of the administration of justice under the French Government.’ Egerton and Grant, pp. 56-7.
[67] See above, p. 79.
[68] Shortt and Doughty, p. 295.
[69] In 1775 the population of the whole of Canada was according to Bouchette’s estimate 90,000 (see the Census of Canada, 1870-1, vol. iv, Statistics of Canada). On the other hand Carleton, in his evidence given before the House of Commons at the time when the Quebec Act was being passed in 1774, estimated the number of the ‘new subjects’ at ‘about 150,000 souls all Roman Catholics’ as against less than 400 Protestants, excluding in the latter case women and children. Egerton and Grant, pp. 51-2.
[70] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 410-11.
[71] Referred to by Carleton as ‘The Suffolk County Resolves in the Massachusetts’. Shortt and Doughty, p. 413.
[72] Carleton, however, after the war broke out, sternly repressed any attempt of the Indians to act except under close supervision of white officers. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on Joseph Brant in the American Revolution, April 3, 1897. Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, p. 243, &c.
[73] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 412-14.
[74] See above, p. 67.
[75] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 450-2.
[76] See the letter and the note to it at p. 451 of Shortt and Doughty. Sir William Johnson had died in July, 1774; his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, had acted as his deputy for Indian affairs, and continued to do so for a while after his death, but in 1775 Major John Campbell was appointed Superintendent of Indian affairs.
[77] The reference is to the raising of a body of 300 Canadians in 1764 for service under Bradstreet in Pontiac’s war. See above p. 24. It seems doubtful whether the complaint to which Carleton refers had any foundation. See Kingsford, vol. v, p. 76.
[78] Carleton’s account of the above, given in a letter to Dartmouth, dated Montreal, June 7, 1775, is that on May 19 he received news from Gage of the outbreak of hostilities, i.e. the fight at Lexington, coupled with a request that he would ‘send the 7th Regiment with some companies of Canadians and Indians to Crown Point, in order to make a diversion and favour his (Gage’s) operations’. The next morning news reached Quebec ‘that one, Benedict Arnold, said to be a native of Connecticut, and a horse jockey, landed a considerable number of armed men at St. John’s: distant from this town (Montreal) eight leagues, about eight in the morning of the 18th, surprised the detachment of the 26th doing duty there, consisting of a sergeant and ten men, and made them prisoners, seized upon the King’s sloop, batteaus, and every other military store, and a few hours after departed, carrying off the craft, prisoners, and stores they had seized. From this party we had the first information of the rebels being in arms upon the lakes, and of their having, under the command of said Arnold, surprised Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the detachment of the 26th doing duty at these two places, and all the craft employed upon those lakes’.... ‘The same evening another express brought an account of the rebels having landed at St. John’s a second time, in the night, between the 18th and 19th.’ Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.
[79] This seems to have been an under-estimate. There were apparently at the time three British regiments in Canada, the 7th, the 8th, and the 26th.
[80] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.
[81] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 456-9.
[82] Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from a military point of view, in regard to the other North American colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775, he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate, though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457.
[83] ‘A few of the gentry, consisting principally of the youth, residing in this place (Montreal) and its neighbourhood, formed a small corps of volunteers under the command of Mr. Samuel Mackay, and took post at St. John’s.’ (Letter from Carleton to Dartmouth as above. Shortt and Doughty, p. 454.)
[84] Shortt and Doughty, p. 459.
[85] This may probably have been the Major Preston referred to in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, December 27, 1775. ‘Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s, that Major Preston, one of two, but he is not sure which, would have been an excellent commander some months since, if he had seen any service.’
This and other quotations from Horace Walpole’s letters are taken from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904.
[86] The general view seems to have been that Chambly might have held out longer, and that the commander, Major Stopford, was shielded by his aristocratic connexions, but the Annual Register for 1776 (p. 5) says that it ‘was in no very defensible condition’, and Carleton seems to have found no fault with its surrender. See the entry on p. 110 of Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2201, 1904, Historical MS. Commission, Report on American manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, vol. i. Sir Guy Carleton to (Lord Barrington), May 21, 1777, ‘has nothing to charge either the garrison of Chamblee or St. John’s with.’
[87] The Annual Register for 1776, p. 12, makes Montgomery’s advance from Montreal to Quebec a kind of repetition of Arnold’s march. ‘Their march was in winter, through bad roads, in a severe climate, beneath the fall of the first snows, and therefore made under great hardships.’ He seems, on the contrary, to have come down the river in the captured British vessels.
[88] There is or was a dispute about the date. Kingsford makes it the night of December 31 to January 1, but there seems no doubt that the attack took place on the previous night, that of December 30-1. See Sir James Le Moyne’s Paper on the Assault on Quebec in 1775, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, 1899.
[89] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 5, 1776.
[90] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, August 11, 1776. It is not clear why Horace Walpole thought poorly of Carleton’s writing. His dispatches are as clear and straightforward as could be wished.
[91] Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 22, 1776.
[92] p. 15.
[93] Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxix, p. 379. Debate of May 6, 1791.
[94] Annual Register as above.
[95] The letter, in which Montgomery complained of personal ill-treatment of himself by Carleton, concluded—‘Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done in Montreal and in the river; if you do, by Heavens there will be no mercy shown.’
[96] Annual Register for 1776; State Papers, p. 255. Carleton’s kindness to the American prisoners was so great that when some of them returned on parole, they were not allowed to communicate with the American troops serving at Crown Point for fear that they might cause disaffection. See Stone’s Life of Brant (1838), vol. i, p. 165.
[97] There is an interesting account of the incident at the Cedars in Stone’s Life of Brant (1838 ed.), vol. i, p. 153, &c. Stone says that Forster had with him one company of regulars and nearly 600 Indians, led by Joseph Brant, the celebrated Mohawk chief. But in spite of the note to p. 151 there seems no doubt that Brant, who had gone to England on a visit in the previous autumn, did not start on his return voyage till late in May or June, and did not arrive at New York till July, long after the event at the Cedars. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, April, 1897, Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, pp. 243, &c., Colonel Cruikshank says that Brant sailed from Falmouth early in June, 1776, and reached New York on July 29, where he fought under Howe. Probably the affair of the Cedars was confounded with the fighting at St. John’s and the attack on Montreal when Ethan Allen was taken prisoner in 1775. Brant seems to have been present in these actions.
[98] See the letter of Ebenezer Sullivan abstracted in the 1890 Report on Canadian Archives, State Papers, p. 78.
[99] Ibid. p. 74.
[100] Annual Register for 1777, p. 2.
[101] See Carleton’s letter to Germain of September 28, 1776, quoting Germain’s of June 21, 1776. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 459-60.
[102] The letter is quoted in extenso at pp. 129-32 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada.
[103] History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii, 1882 ed., chap. xii, p. 447.
[104] Clinton was named to act instead of Sir William Howe, in the event of his succeeding Howe in command of the army; this contingency happened, and he, and not Howe, acted as commissioner. Under the Act any three of the five commissioners were empowered to treat with the Americans.
[105] Howe was a pronounced Whig. Burgoyne was more or less neutral until his later years, when he threw in his lot with Fox and his friends. Clinton belonged to a Whig family, but seems to have been a supporter of the Ministry; Cornwallis had voted with Lord Camden against taxing the colonists.
[106] Influence of Sea Power on History, chap. ix, pp. 342-3.
[107] See above, pp. 90-1.
[108] It is given in Lord E. Fitzmaurice’s Life of Lord Shelburne.
[109] p. 20.
[110] As to Lady Betty Germain’s bequest of Drayton to Lord George Sackville, see the letter from Lord Vere to Earl Temple of December 19, 1769, in the Grenville Papers (edited by W. J. Smith, 1853, John Murray), vol. iv, p. 491. See also various references in Horace Walpole’s Letters (Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904). In a letter to George Montagu, July 23, 1763, Walpole gives a description of Drayton, and refers to Lady Betty Germain as ‘its divine old mistress’. Drayton belonged to the Earls of Peterborough, the Mordaunt family. The daughter and heiress of the last earl married Sir John Germain, and left him the property. He married, as his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, the Lady Betty Germain in question, and left Drayton to her, expressing a wish that if she had no children, she should leave it to one of the Sackvilles, which she accordingly did. Lady Betty Germain, whose father was Viceroy of Ireland, was a friend of Swift.
[111] Letter to Sir H. Mann, February 20, 1764. The other four were Pitt (Lord Chatham), Charles Townshend, Conway, and Charles Yorke.
[112] ‘I think nobody can doubt of Lord George’s resolution since he has exposed himself to the artillery of the whole town. Indeed I always believed him brave and that he sacrificed himself to sacrifice Prince Ferdinand.’ Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, November 23, 1775. The letter was written just as Germain was about to take office.
[113] To the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway and the Countess of Ailesbury, January 15, 1775.
[114] Quoted by Horace Walpole in his letter to Sir Horace Mann of March 5, 1777.
[115] Carleton’s letter was dated May 20, 1777. It is quoted in full at p. 129 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada, as well as in the Report on the Canadian Archives for 1885.
[116] One reason alleged is that Carleton had given evidence against Germain at the latter’s court-martial.
[117] This letter, with Carleton’s letter of May 20, 1777, will be found in Mr. Brymner’s Report on the Canadian Archives for 1885, pp. cxxxii-vii, Note D.
[118] The note to p. 474 of Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada (Shortt and Doughty) condemns Carleton’s conduct to Germain.
[119] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, p. 458.
[120] Quoted in full at pp. 457-9 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada.
[121] October 15, 1777. See Canadian Archives Report for 1890, p. 101. It is not absolutely clear that the reference is to Livius.
[122] The records as to the dates of Livius’ appointment are somewhat confusing. There is a printed pamphlet in the Colonial Office Library giving Livius’ petition and the proceedings which followed in England. It is dated 1779, and entitled ‘Proceedings between Sir Guy Carleton, K.B., late Governor of the Province of Quebec, and Peter Livius Esq., Chief Justice of the said Province, &c. &c.’. The note to p. 476 of Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada (Shortt and Doughty) is favourable to Livius and unfavourable to Carleton.
[123] See also below, p. 238.
[124] One cause which reduced their numbers was that in the seventeenth century the Jesuits converted a considerable number of Mohawks and induced them to settle in Canada. They were known as the Caghnawagas.
[125] As regards the Six Nation Indians, Joseph Brant, and the Border forays in the War of Independence, see Stone’s Life of Brant, and two papers by Lt.-Col. Ernest Cruikshank, on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, in the Transactions of the Canadian Institute, vol. v, 1898, p. 243, and vol. vii, 1904, p. 391. The papers were read in April, 1897, and April, 1902. See also The Old New York Frontier, by F. W. Halsey. Scribners, New York, 1902.
[126] On Pownall’s map of 1776 is marked at the spot ‘The great portage one mile’, but the distance between the two rivers was rather greater.
[127] St. Leger’s dispatch to Burgoyne, dated Oswego, August 27, 1777, and written after his retreat, forms Appendix No. XIII to A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne. London, 1780.
[128] St. Leger reported it to be twelve miles distant.
[129] St. Leger says definitely, ‘Sir John Johnson put himself at the head of this party.’ Stone, on the other hand, makes out that Sir John Johnson remained behind in the camp and was at that part of it which was surprised by Willett (See Stone’s Life of Brant, 1838 ed., vol. i, p. 235, note). St. Leger says that he ‘could not send above 80 white men, Rangers and troops included, with the whole corps of Indians’, but all the accounts seem to agree in placing the number of Indians at 400 and no more.
[130] The details of the fighting at Oriskany, and Willett’s sortie from the fort, are more confusing and contradictory even than those of most battles and sieges. The American accounts make Oriskany an American victory, and Willett’s sortie a taking possession of the whole British camp, the contents of which, after the defenders had been put to flight, were carried off to the fort in seven wagons which made three trips between the fort and the camp. St. Leger, no doubt minimizing what happened, reported that the sortie resulted in no ‘further advantage than frightening some squaws and pilfering the packs of the warriors which they left behind them’. From the contemporary plan of the operations at Fort Stanwix it seems clear that Willett surprised only the post at the lower landing-place and not the whole British camp.
[131] See above pp. 96-7 and note.
[132] Junius to the Duke of Grafton, December 12, 1769.
[133] Walpole to the Honourable Henry Synan Conway, November 12, 1774.
[134] Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, June 14, 1787. See also letter to the same, January 16, 1786. ‘General Burgoyne’s Heiress, I hear, succeeded extremely well, and was besides excellently acted.’
[135] Letter to the Rev. William Mason, October 5, 1777. In this letter Horace Walpole, apparently without real ground, says that Burgoyne was the natural son of Lord Bingley.
[136] Letters of August 8, August 11, and August 24, 1777.
[137] Not to be confounded with the Wood Creek mentioned above, p. 147, &c., which was a feeder of Lake Oneida.
[138] Letter to Sir H. Mann, September 1, 1777.
[139] See State Papers, p. 97, in Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1890.
[140] State of the Expedition from Canada Narrative, p. 12.
[141] Kingsford makes the number to have been 746: History of Canada, vol. vi, p. 216, note.
[142] From Burgoyne’s dispatch it appears that Baum was beginning a further advance when the attack was made. His words are, ‘Colonel Baum was induced to proceed without sufficient knowledge of the ground.’
[143] The American accounts put the British casualties at nearly 1,000.
[144] It may probably have been to the disaster at Bennington that Horace Walpole referred when he wrote to the Countess of Upper Ossory on September 29, 1777: ‘General Burgoyne has had but bad sport in the woods.’
[145] Benjamin Lincoln was the American commander charged with the duty of attacking Burgoyne’s communications. He was afterwards in command at Charleston when it was taken by the English in May, 1780.
[146] It is not easy to make out the details of the fighting. After the battle of September 19, the two armies were said to be only about half a mile distant from each other, but on October 7, according to Burgoyne’s dispatch, after advancing for some time he formed his troops within three-quarters of a mile of the enemy. The advance was apparently not direct but diagonal against the extreme left of the Americans. The main English camp near the river, where there was a bridge of boats, does not seem to have been at all molested, though it was presumably drawn back in the following night. Breyman’s camp which was stormed is shown on the plan appended to the State of the Expedition from Canada, as well in the rear of the extreme right of the English line.
[147] Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Upper Ossory on November 3, 1777, seems to be referring to reports of the battle at Freeman’s Farm. ‘If your angel would be seeing, why did he not put on his spectacles and hover over Arnold, who has beaten the vapouring Burgoyne and destroyed his magazines? Carleton, who was set aside for General Hurlothrumbo, is gone to save him and the remains of his army if he can.’ On November 13 he writes to the same, ‘General Swagger is said to be entrenched at Saratoga, but I question whether he will be left at leisure to continue his Commentaries: one Arnold is mighty apt to interrupt him.’ Authentic news of Burgoyne’s surrender did not reach England till December 1. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on December 4, Walpole says: ‘On Tuesday night came news from Carleton at Quebec, which indeed had come from France earlier, announcing the total annihilation (as to America) of Burgoyne’s army.... Burgoyne is said to be wounded in three places, his vanquisher, Arnold, is supposed to be dead of his wounds.’ It will be noted that Arnold is made the hero on the American side, and that there is no mention of Walpole’s godson, Gates. Walpole contemplated invasion of Canada and possible loss of Quebec as the result of the disaster.
[148] The above account has been taken almost entirely from the original dispatches, documents, and evidence published in A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne. London, 1780. Burgoyne, in a private letter to Howe of 20th October, attributed the surrender in part to the fact that his troops were not all British. See Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution (1904), vol. i, p. 140.
[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown of Great Britain.’ (Annual Register, 1778, p. 341.)
[150] Stone’s Life of Brant, and among recent books, Halsey’s Old New York Frontier, give good accounts of this border war from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities, not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in Gertrude of Wyoming made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one of the monsters of the story.
The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut, though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded.
On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’, published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming Connecticut.’
In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania; that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time) to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr. Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’
The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.
[151] This is the date given on p. 10 of Sir Frederick Haldimand, by Jean N. McIlwraith in the ‘Makers of Canada’ series. The notice in the Dictionary of National Biography gives the date as 1756. The life states that Haldimand as a young man possibly took service with the King of Sardinia, and certainly served under Frederick the Great. The Dictionary of National Biography states that there is no record of his having been in the Prussian army.
[152] For Du Calvet’s case see Mr. Brymner’s Introduction to the Report on Canadian Archives, 1888, p. xv, &c., and also Note D. This valuable Introduction and the equally valuable Introduction to the 1887 volume should be consulted for an estimate of Haldimand and his administration, the Haldimand papers being catalogued in these volumes.
[153] Shortt and Doughty, p. 497.
[154] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488.
[155] Ibid., p. 498.
[156] Ibid., p. 486. See also above, p. 92.
[157] 24 Geo. III, cap. 1, see Shortt and Doughty, pp. 499, 501 and notes. See also above, p. 88, note.
[158] Shortt and Doughty, p. 486. ‘The session’ must have been a later session than that of 1775, as Livius was not in the Council in that year. See above, p. 141.
[159] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 476-7 and notes, also 487, 488-9 and notes.
[160] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488. It will be remembered that Livius was not in Canada at this time.
[161] See above, p. 134.
[162] See above, p. 182.
[163] Preface to Annual Register for 1782.
[164] Horace Walpole to the Rev. William Mason, April 25, 1781.