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4. Invasion and Aftermath
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
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The Hunters Lodges
The armed incursions of the Hunters' Lodges or Chasseurs in 1838 marked the third - out of four - occasions when Americans and their Canadian allies invaded foreign territory to the north. The invasions were sporadic and only marginally better organized than the earlier efforts of Mackenzie and Papineau. They fell far short of their ultimate aim of removing Britain from the continent and achieving independence.
Coming on the heels of the 1837 rebellions, the Hunters' Lodges forced the British to keep their standing army on Canadian soil. Killing, injuring, and robbing by the Hunters instilled fear in the local population. Charges of disloyalty and republicanism increased. Pro-government volunteers used the raids as a pretext to continuing attacking their enemies. Martial law was invoked in Lower Canada and habeas corpus was suspended.
The 1838 Invasion of Lower Canada
The US response to rebels operating on their soil was lukewarm at first. Early in 1838, US President Martin Van Buren issued a Neutrality Proclamation forbidding US citizens from taking sides in Canadian rebellions, but the Americans did nothing serious to curb the rebels for almost a year.
On February 28, Robert Nelson, Cyrille Côté and a group of 600 patriotes and American sympathizers raided Lower Canada from Vermont. Nelson proclaimed himself President of the Provisional Republic of Lower Canada; stopped by militia and forced to retreat. The following day they were arrested and detained by US authorities after they were forced to retreat back into the United States by the Lower Canada militia. They were soon released for lack of evidence.
On Feb 10 1838, the British Parliament passed an act suspending the Constitution of 1791 in Lower Canada as of March 27. The Assembly simply did not sit for three years. Nor did the Legislative Council. Governor Gosford was empowered to appoint a Special Council of Lower Canada to pass the necessary laws, and he appointed James Cuthbert to chair the 22 member body. He also revoked martial law in Montreal; 501 people in the city were still in jail for treasonous activities.
On May 27, John Lambton, Lord Durham landed at Quebec to replace Gosford. Appointed Governor-in-Chief of Lower Canada, and Governor-General of British North America by British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, he had a mandate to investigate colonial grievances after the rebellions of 1837, and examine and recommend the form and future government of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.
Durham quickly set to his task of governing, and began five months of research and travel before writing his famous report. On June 1, he dismissed the sitting Special Council and appointed his own five-man Executive Council, three of whom he had brought over with him. He believed that such a move would prevent protest from either the French or the English faction. However, his autocratic rule would soon land him in trouble.
His most pressing problem was what to do with the aftermath of the Rebellions. More than 150 prisoners from the Rebellions were still languishing in jail. Estimates put the number of people involved in the Rebellions at about 20 000, with 13 000 of them in Lower Canada. More than a thousand had been arrested. Scores had escaped across the American border. With those kinds of numbers, Durham's handling of this issue would go a long way in determining the success of his administration.
He realized that it was virtually impossible to obtain fair trials or to secure guilty verdicts for the rebels from French-Canadian juries. Thus, Lord Durham took matters into his own hands. After obtaining confessions from nine of the main Patriote leaders, he banished eight to Bermuda without trial; including Dr. Wolfred Nelson, who shouted out, as he was being led to the ship in chains, "By what authority do you chain us like felons?"
Durham then proclaimed a partial amnesty for 107 jailed rebels, but not for those 16 patriotes still in the US (including Louis-Jospeh and George-Etienne Cartier), and the ten accused of the murder of Lt. Jack Weir, who were to be exiled permanently. These decisions would have far-reaching consequences as it led to his dismissal for having exceeded his authority. British legislators ruled that even a governor could not punish people without trial.)
Durham also showed himself unsympathetic to the desires of French Canada, and on August 16, the British Parliament passed a Bill of indemnity disavowing his suggestion regarding the assimilation of the French Canadians. A month later, he learned that he was being recalled to London. On October 9, he published his resignation in the Montreal and Quebec newspapers and sailed for England on November 1. He was replaced as administrator by John Colborne, Lord Seaton until Jan. 17, 1839.
The Military Campaigns
Colborne maintained the military and militia in a state of preparedness, as the remaining rebels, now calling themselves Hunters Lodges (Frères Chasseurs) mobilized in towns around Montreal such as Beauharnois, Ste-Martine, St-Mathias and St-Constant (where they disarmed a body of Loyalists). Unlike the liberal rebels who fought for their rights as British subjects, the Hunters were republican rebels backed by American sympathizers, who wanted to keep the revolution alive.
On November 8, he allowed George-Étienne Cartier, Antoine Gérin-Lajoie and six other exiled Patriotes to return from Vermont on the promise of good behaviour. Gérin-Lajoie wrote the famous song, Un canadien errant, about the sadness he felt in exile.
The events that November were more comic than dangerous, as Wolfred Nelson and Cyrille Côté again invaded Lower Canada. On November 4, Côté and a hundred Patriotes from Châteauguay under the command of Cardinal and Duquet attacked Caughnawaga looking for arms while the Mohawks attended church. The Iroquois counterattacked and beat back the rebels, taking Cardinal and Duquet prisoner.
Colborne again declared martial law as Nelson established himself at Napierville with 700 men, and again issued a declaration of independence, being once more proclaimed President of the Provisional Republic of Lower Canada. On November 5, Colborne's British regular troops skirmished with Côté's 300 Chasseurs for a half hour at Lacolle, leaving 8 rebels dead. Two days later, 600 Chasseurs were dispersed by Lower Canada militia, leaving eight dead behind.
On November 9, Nelson and Côté mounted another raid from Vermont on the Loyalists at Lacolle; the Chasseurs were again dispersed after a two hour battle when 5,000 British troops and Iroquois led by Charles Taylor arrived; Nelson and his rebels fled to the US, leaving behind more than 50 dead, and Colborne ordered his troops to burn the town of Beauharnois, and the houses of known rebels in the area.
On November 21, the US government finally acted against breaches of neutrality, stating that Americans entering Canada in violation of US neutrality law would not be given protection when they returned across the border. This effectively ended the activities of the Hunters Lodges, Frères chasseurs and other Republican factions in both Upper and lower Canada.
Governor Colborne immediately declared a new martial law, and troops arrested 855 people in Lower Canada, 816 at Montreal, 18 at Quebec, 19 at Sherbrooke and 2 at Trois-Rivieres.
 Sidelight: John A. Macdonald and the Windmill RebelsOn November 12, 1838, the steamboats Kingston and Brockville cast off from Scobels Wharf at the foot of Brock Street in Kingston, Ontario, and headed down the St. Lawrence. On board were four companies of British regulars of the 83rd Regiment of Foot, with two 18-pounder cannons and a howitzer. Their orders were to extract a party of heavily armed American invaders - popularly called "bandits" or "pirates" - who had barricaded themselves inside a large, stone windmill on the shore near Prescott. The rebels were members of the Hunters Lodge, or Patriot Hunters, hard-line republicans from northern New York State. Mostly American, they sympathized with the Canadian radicals who had been defeated in 1837, and hoped to duplicate the success of the Texas rebellion two years before when Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie established a republic in northern Mexico. Detesting "tyranny and oppression wherever manifested," the Hunters were certain that all it would take was "a good stand maintained for a short time" to help Canadians win freedom from the British yoke. But the Windmill was their Alamo, and Colonel Henry Dundas and his regiment made short work of the Hunters. Three days later they were back in Kingston with two boatloads of 160 prisoners.  Waiting at the wharf was a 23-year old Kingston barrister named John A. Macdonald, who watched as the redcoats led their prisoners past the Tête-du-pont Barracks, over the Cataraqui bridge and up the hill to Fort Henry. During the recent rebellion Macdonald had volunteered for active service, but his military career never went farther than drilling and marching with a local militia unit, the Commercial Bank Guard, raised by one of his client firms. The lead prisoner from the Battle of the Windmill was a tall, handsome man named Nils von Schoultz, dressed in tattered clothing and with a great cord knotted around his chest. Von Schoultz, a 33-year old Swedish soldier of fortune and revolutionary, had taken charge of the rebels when many American leaders had panicked during the invasion of Upper Canada and returned to Ogdensburg.  While John A. Macdonald could not participate in the court martial, he was approached by a Kingston resident to act for his brother-in-law, a rebel named Daniel George. from Pamelia, New York. Macdonald went immediately to Fort Henry to give counsel to George, as well as von Schoultz and another rebel leader, Dorethus Abbey, helping them write their personal statements to the court. The three men would be pleading for their lives, although von Schoultz intended to plead guilty as a matter of honour. Macdonald told him that if that was the case, he could do nothing to help him.
 The trial began on November 28, in the whitewashed casements of Fort Henry. Colonel John B. Marks of the Third Frontenac Regiment of the Upper Canada Militia was the presiding judge, and William Henry Draper, Solicitor-General of Upper Canada, served as prosecutor. George and Abbey read their statements and were duly condemned to death. Von Schoultz, despite a dignified and impassioned defence that impressed the court, was also sentenced to be hanged. George and Abbey went to the gallows on December 12, followed by von Schoultz on December 18, and eight more rebels before January 4, 1839. Marks sentenced a few rebels to penitentiary terms, and released the rest, except about 60 prisoners he ordered shipped to Montreal in the summer of 1839 and put on board a prison convoy with nearly 200 other rebels and convicts, to be transported to Australia. On November 21 1838, the US government passed an order that Americans entering Canada in violation of US neutrality law would not be given protection when they returned across the border. This effectively ended the activities of the Hunters Lodges, Frères chasseurs and other Republican factions, and from then until the US Civil War, the Canadas were left in peace. |
Aftermath of Invasion
Once the threat of the Chasseurs was dealt with, the British turned their attention to dealing with the rebellions, and their immediate aftermath. First, they had to deal with those who had taken up arms against the government. Captured rebels in both Upper and Lower Canada were forced marched, chained in twos, to Toronto and Montreal, respectively, receiving jeers and abuse from the local population along the way. The jails were crammed full with suspected rebels and traitors. There were more than one thousand in Upper Canada, and several times that number in Lower Canada. Many were held for long periods of time. For instance, the captives from the Pelee Island raid were held in jail for over a year before they were brought to trial. Because of the brutally harsh conditions in the colonial jails, dozens of prisoners died in custody.
In both colonies, those who had been forced to join the rebels were released under a general amnesty. Many who had simply gone along with the rebel leaders were similarly freed. However, even with that loosening, close to 500 rebels remained in custody. Magistrates brought charges of murder against a small number of leaders. The government and their supporters demanded the death penalty. In their mind, things were quite simple - traitors ought to be hanged.
British authorities left nothing to chance in Lower Canada, where the rebellions had been much more serious. Martial law was retained until the end of April 1838, and habeas corpus suspended. As a result, people could be arrested merely on suspicion and they could be held indefinitely without being formally charged. Even when martial law ended, authorities continued the suspension of habeas corpus. The truth of the matter was that they were concerned that they would have difficulty obtaining guilty verdicts from French-Canadian juries. In addition, they were concerned about maintaining peace and order.
On December 6, Colborne set up a court martial in Montreal to deal with Lower Canada rebels accused of high treason; 9 will be acquitted and 99 condemned to death. By May 1, 1839, 12 will be executed, 58 deported to Australia and 27 freed under a caution.
The Montreal executions began December 21, with the hanging of Joseph Cardinal and Joseph Duquet at the Prison du Pied-du-courant at the corner of Rue Notre-Dame and Rue de Lorimier, today the headquarters of the Société des alcools du Québec. On January 18, Chasseurs Pierre Decoigne, Francois Hamelin, Joseph Robert and Ambroise Sanguinet were hanged. And on February 15, in the last public hanging of leaders of the rebellion in Lower Canada, 12 Chasseurs were hanged: notary Joseph Narcisse Cardinal; law student Joseph Duquette, notary Pierre-Théophile Decoigne, farmer and Lt. of Militia François-Xavier Hamelin, farmer and Captain of Militia Joseph Robert, farmers Ambroise et Charles Sanguinet (brothers), notary François-Marie Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier, painter Pierre-Rémi Narbonne, teacher François Nicolas, farmer Amable Daunais, and French soldier Charles Hindenlang.
The last courts martial took place on May 1, and on June 1, the Lower Canada banks resumed payment after two years of rebellion.
Mopping Up in Upper Canada
The Executive Council received scores of petitions with 35 000 signatures asking for mercy for the two men. They decided to recommend to the newly installed governor that the sentences be carried out, fearing the political fallout if they did not. Even a personal appeal from Lount's wife, Elizabeth, would not deter Arthur. The executions went ahead and in the aftermath the radical reformers made martyrs of the two men and railed against British tyranny. Arthur let it be known that he would sign no more execution orders.
Two months after her husband's hanging, Elizabeth Lount wrote an Open Letter to John Beverley Robinson, Chief Justice of Upper Canada, in exile in Pontiac, Michigan, bemoaning the fact that "by the cruelty of the government, I find myself a widow, driven from home and kindred and a stranger in a strange land. I shall close this letter by saying that my husband, just before his tragic death, said "that he freely forgave them (the tories) for their cruelty, and that he was prepared to meet his God in peace."
- RESOURCE: Lount's Farewell Sermon
However, there were bigger issues to be dealt with by British authorities. With Bond Head and Gosford's resignations, the way was cleared for the appointment of a new governor. He should not only govern the colonies, but also investigate the causes of the rebellions and recommend solutions so that they would never re-occur in the future. The choice fell to John George Lambton, the Earl of Durham, nicknamed "Radical Jack. Although he stayed in British North America for only five months, he was invested with wide-ranging powers as high commissioner and governor-in-chief. It would be the report that bears his name that would be a milestone in the political and constitutional history of Canada.
Durham Reports on Canada
On January 30, 1839, John Lambton, Lord Durham, completed his Report on the Affairs of British North America, and handed it to British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne the following day. The former Governor of the colony, known as Radical Jack, recommended joining the Canadas under one responsible government, and eventually uniting all the provinces of British North America
The Durham Report (see also Buller's Comentary) is one of the most important documents ever penned in Canada. In response to the first part of his mission - to discover what had caused the Rebellions - Durham left little doubt. There were in his mind, two principal reasons behind the outbreak of the Rebellions. One was the incessant conflict between the appointed councils - the Family Compact and Chateau Clique - and the elected assembly. That was the political dimension. The second reason was the fundamental animosity between the French and the English. That was the cultural dimension. The root of the problem, from his racist perspective, was the backward nature of French-Canadian society. In his famous words, "I expected to find a contest between a government and a people; I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state; I found a struggle not of principles, but of races."
To resolve these difficulties, Durham made some monumental recommendations. All were inter-connected and mutually reinforcing. First, he proposed union of the two Canadas. Secondly, he suggested responsible government based on the British cabinet model. Finally, he proposed that there be a separation between imperial and local concerns. He also called for the elimination of the system of Clergy Reserves. One of the few suggestions that British authorities chose not to adopt was Durham's call for representation by population within the united parliament.
Durham saw matters from a decidedly racist perspective. (He saw the French as a people of no history or culture, backward, and priest-ridden.) However, his constitutional reforms would become the blueprint for change within Upper and Lower Canada. The Act of Union of 1841 saw the birth of the united province, Lafontaine, sometimes called Canada's first prime minister, and Baldwin formed the first truly responsible ministry in 1841. The true test case for responsible came in 1849 with Lord Elgin's signing of the Rebellion Losses Bill (a bill he personally disagreed with because he felt that in providing compensation to those in Lower Canada who had suffered property damage during the Rebellions it encouraged anti-government behaviour). Finally, in allocating 42 seats both to Canada East and Canada West, the seeds were sown for political deadlock, and ultimately Confederation.
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