Goodbye to the 14th Colony

When they launched separate attacks on Canada last year, General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold both carried messages addressing the Canadians as "brothers." Montgomery was authorized to recruit Canadian volunteers for the Continental Army, paying a bonus of 200 acres per man, plus 40 acres more for a wife and each child. Indeed, Congress only agreed to the invasion if, as General Philip Schuyler said, "it will not be disagreeable to the Canadians." The goal of all this friendliness was not just to forestall any British march down the Hudson but also to bring Canada onto the American side as a "14th colony." Last week, as the ragged survivors retreated southward across Lake Champlain, it was clear that the whole plan had been a disastrous miscalculation.

It is sometimes overlooked that the ambitious American policy drew much of its impetus from the Quebec Act, that tyrannical but farsighted statute by which George Ill's ministers reorganized the status of Canada within the Empire two years ago. The act denied Canadians both self-government and the right to trial by jury. But it confirmed the nearly feudal authority of the French landowning seigneurs, established the freedom (and thus the power) of Roman Catholicism in Canada, and granted to Canada great tracts of land spreading westward along the Ohio River.

Partly because several colonies (notably Virginia) lay claim to these same lands, American leaders regarded the Quebec Act as one of the so-called "Intolerable Acts" of the British government. Radicals were also incensed at a new abridgment of civil liberties. New Englanders were fearful of the apparent revival of a powerful Catholic neighbor to the north. (A 19-year-old student at King's College in New York, Alexander Hamilton, even wrote a pamphlet suggesting that the Inquisition would be reborn and might soon be burning heretics at the stake in America.)

It became fashionable in the Congress to believe that if rebellion broke out, many "unhappy" Canadian brethren (an overwhelming majority of whom are French) would view any American invading force as "liberators." No one properly reckoned on the conservatism and clannishness of the French-speaking peasantry, however, to say nothing of the influence of the church. The results are by now only too well known: as General Montgomery fought his way northward, occupying St. John's and Montreal, he enlisted few Canadian recruits despite his generous bonus offer. That virtually doomed the expedition even before the defeat last January at Quebec, where Montgomery was killed.

The Canadians did save Arnold's hungry and isolated forces during this past winter by selling them beef. But when hard money ran out, as it eventually did, Canadians refused credit. When American troops began pillaging farms, the Canadians became increasingly hostile.

If Congress had speedily reinforced the fewer than 1,000 able-bodied American troops besieging Quebec, a notable military victory might still have been won. But the British had already sent their own reinforcements before 6,000 Continental regulars and militia finally arrived in Canada in May. The besiegers fled southward. Even after they had united with the fresh troops, a large contingent of the American forces was routed midway between Quebec and Montreal. After struggling to He aux Noix below St. John's, they began dying by the hundreds from smallpox and dysentery. Of that fine force, fewer than 3,000 men, now huddled at the foot of Champlain for the defense of Ticonderoga, are ready for combat. Late last week their command was changed again, for the fifth time since the fighting began, this time from General Horatio Gates back to General Schuyler.

Meanwhile, England's General John Burgoyne, with 8,000 British regulars and Hessians, as well as swarms of Indians, is massing troops at St. John's for a march into New York. On the once promising northern front, the only hopeful sign this week was the sound of axes at Skenesborough. There work has begun on the tiny fleet with which Arnold, now a brigadier general, still hopes to challenge the British. The year's military effort in Canada has until now at least kept the Indians from being loosed for frontier raiding in New York and New England, but the dream of the 14th colony seems dashed for good.

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