Tag: Quebec Act

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John Dickinson and the Letter to Canada

After the French and Indian War the British government made a number of decisions with respect as to how it would govern its North American colonies. One was the Proclamation of 1763 in which it reserved all the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains for Native Americans. English settlers who had already settled there had […]

by James M. Smith
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The Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607–1783

 The Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783, by Guy Chet (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020) To my way of thinking, when we try to understand people and events in the past, we benefit more from channeling their understanding of their actions and beliefs, rather than identifying motivating forces that were hidden from them at […]

by Timothy Symington
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“That Damned Absurd Word Liberty:” Les Habitants, the Quebec Act, and American Revolutionary Ideology, 1774–1776

The American invasion of Quebec of 1775-1776 failed to achieve its primary objective: to bring into the fold what the Continental Congress referred to as “the only link wanting, to compleat the bright and strong chains of union.”[1] While Canada would not join its southern brethren in outright rebellion, the Americans’ campaign furnishes important insight into […]

by Sebastian van Bastelaer
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The Earl of Dartmouth: Secretary of State for the Colonies, Third Year: August 1774–November 1775

While the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was on holiday in the summer of 1774, his office continued to receive and send communications concerning the political divergence with the American colonies. The general issues were the Quebec Act, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the Non-Importation Agreement, […]

by Bob Ruppert
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The Canadian Patriot Experience

The American Revolution was in effect a civil war. It included all the heightened acrimony associated with one. In what became the United States, there was hostility and outright violence between those supporting the rebellion (“Patriots”) and those against it (“Loyalists”). Soldiers and families alike faced social ostracism, physical danger, loss of property, and for […]

by Richard J. Werther