The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776

Appendix 1: Canadian Voices: A Note on Sources

Appendix 1 Canadian Voices A Note on Sources One of the chief challenges in examining the 1774–1776 Revolutionary crisis in Quebec is the relative national imbalance of firsthand primary source records .Continental “American”documentation covers a wide range of civilian, military, government, and newspaper sources; while outside of high-level British government correspondence, the available Canadian accounts principally derive from three select categories: journals from Québec City’s Old Subject Tories, government-associated New Subjects’journals and memoirs, and the Baby-Taschereau-Williams commission’s report.Each of these sources provides valuable insight into specific segments of the Canadian population, but also has notable shortcomings. Among the most heavily referenced Canadian sources are the several journals generated by Anglo-Tories in Québec City during the blockade. The most popular of these is Thomas Ainslie’s journal,last published in 1968.1 The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec published several other journals from 1876 to 1906.2 Yet perhaps the most refined Old Subject journal remains unpublished, the “Journal of the Most Remarkable Events . . . ,” held in the Library and Archives Canada.These accounts record many details within the capital, showing their authors’proximity to government and military leaders and providing good insight into hard-line “English”Canadian loyalists’views. However, they all suffer from two key weaknesses. First, their notably similar content indicates considerable collaboration or iterative production; they cannot reliably be used as independent sources. For any given day, there are only shades of difference or minor details varying between the several journal keepers’entries. Second, since the authors roamed about in less than one square mile of the gigantic province for almost six months, trapped behind fortress walls, they relied tremendously on secondhand accounts and rumors to flesh out events occurring outside of the capital city—and unsurprisingly, 356 Appendix 1 many of these reports were erroneous or exaggerated. In several cases, earlier historians of this campaign have been overly reliant on,and uncritical of,these journals’ indirect “observations,” treating them as fact, while such accounts often do not withstand scrutiny when weighed against other primary sources. Another highly referenced documentary collection comes from five FrenchCanadian journals and memoirs kept by the notaries Sanguinet, Badeaux, Berthelot, and Foucher, and active loyalist Claude Lorimier.3 These different authors provide significant eyewitness accounts of events in their own surroundings: Sanguinet in Montréal, Berthelot in Québec City, Badeaux in Trois-Rivières,Foucher at St-Jean,and Lorimier reflecting on his adventures. However,being written by Canadiens who clearly aligned themselves with the government, they are distinctly partisan accounts, with Badeaux’s uniquely balanced journal being the exception. Clergy views are also fairly well documented, with numerous collected and published letters from Bishop Briand and Vicar-General Montgolfier.4 Although this author did not have the opportunity to investigate archdiocese holdings or individual parish records and other local resources,some of these may yet offer interesting details for future research.5 Somewhat curiously, seigneurs and merchants left little firsthand documentation for this period. The available fragments of seigneurs’ correspondence are miniscule and do not offer any great insight. Only a scant few of the radical patriot Quebec merchants left records in their letters or appeals to Congress,6 and a handful of loyalist Canadien bourgeois accounts are captured in Verreau’s Invasion du Canada and Pierre Foretier’s “Notes and Reminesces” from Montréal’s occupation.7 In examining the bulk of the populace, Quebec’s largely illiterate habitants did not leave a meaningful record of their perspectives and experience; so their motivations and local activities have to be gleaned and interpreted from others’accounts.The best sources for the summer 1775 parish rebellions in Montreal District come from Francis Maseres’s partisan compilations of anti-administration sources in contemporary publications,8 which must be weighed accordingly. Likewise, there are many diverse accounts of radical Canadians’activities in this period among the Papers of the Continental Congress . The documents offering the most detail, however, tend to have been composed years after the fact, and generally these were written to justify claims for Congressional compensation. They help complete the picture of Appendix 1 357 Canadian views and events,but must be scrutinized carefully with their original purpose in mind. The one distinctly essential source for habitant activity in this period,however , is the Baby-Taschereau-Williams report from the Quebec and lower Three Rivers Districts...