No serious conflict now marked England's rule in her new territory, and the people of Canada, and especially of the Niagara region, had now comparatively a few years' repose, but then came one of the most important periods in its history. Their country was invaded, and for a time seemed on the point of passing under the control of the Congress of the old Thirteen Colonies, now in rebellion against England. Only the genius of an able governor-general saved the valley of the St. Lawrence to the British Crown.
In the year 1774, Parliament intervened for the first time in Canadian affairs, and passed what was known as the "Quebec Act," which greatly extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec, as defined by the Proclamation of 1763. On one side the province now extended to the frontiers of New England, Pennsylvania, New York Province, the Ohio, and the left bank of the Mississippi; on the other to the Hudson's Bay Territory; Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen Islands, annexed to Newfoundland by the Proclamation of 1763, were made part of the province of Quebec. The "Quebec Act" created much debate in the House of Commons. The Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, described it as a "most cruel and odious measure." The opposition in the province was among the British inhabitants, who sent over a petition for its repeal or amendment, their principal grievance being that it substituted the laws and usages of Canada for English law. The "Act of 1774" was exceedingly unpopular in the English-speaking colonies, then at the commencement of the Revolution, on account of the extension of the limits of the province so as to include the country long known as the "Old North-west" in American history, and the consequent confinement of the Thirteen Colonies between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains, beyond which the hardy and bold frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already passing into the great valley of the Ohio. Parliament, however, appears to have been influenced by a desire to adjust the government of the province so as to conciliate the majority of the Canadian people at the critical time.
The advice of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, who succeeded General Murray as Governor-General, had much to do with the liberality of the "Quebec Act" towards the French Canadians. He crossed the Atlantic in 1769 and remained absent from Canada for four years. He returned to carry out the "Quebec Act," which was the foundation of the large political and religious liberties which French Canada has ever since enjoyed. The "Act" aroused the indignation of the older American colonies, and had considerable influence in directing the early course of the Revolution which ended in the establishment of a federal republic. To it the Declaration of Independence refers as follows: "Abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in other colonies." During the Revolution the Continental Congress attempted to secure the active alliance of Canada, and to that end sent a commission made up of Franklin, Chase, Charles Carroll, and John Carroll to Quebec; but the province remained loyal throughout. It will be noticed in another chapter that General Brock, in answering the "Proclamation" issued by Hull in 1812, voiced the belief that Canada was the price the American Colonies had promised to pay France in return for her valuable aid in the Revolution!
Pfister's Sketch of Fort Niagara and the "Communication," Two Years before the Outbreak of the Revolutionary War.
It is not necessary to dwell here on the events of a war the history of which is so familiar to every one.[28] When the first Continental Congress met at Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, the colonies were on the eve of independence as a result of the coercive measures forced on Parliament by the King's pliable ministers led by Lord North. The "Declaration," however, was not finally proclaimed until nearly two years later, on July 4, 1776, when the Thirteen Colonies declared themselves "free and independent States," absolved of their allegiance to the British Crown. But many months before this great epoch-making event, war had actually commenced on Lake Champlain. On an April day, in the now memorable year 1775, the "embattled farmers" had fired at Concord and Lexington, the shots "heard round the world," and a few weeks later the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, then defended by very feeble garrisons, were in the possession of colonial troops, led by Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, the two "Green Mountain Boys" who organised this expedition. Canada was at this time in a very defenceless condition. Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga, and his army, from which so much was expected, made prisoners of war. This great misfortune of the British cause was followed by the alliance of France with the States. French money, men, and ships eventually assured the independence of the Republic, whose fortunes were very low at times despite the victory at Saratoga. England was not well served in this American war; she had no Washington to direct her campaign, and Gage, Burgoyne, and Cornwallis were not equal to the responsibilities thrown upon them. Cornwallis's defeat at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, was the death blow to the hopes of England in North America.
Had General Sullivan's campaign of 1779, as planned, been successful, he would have attacked Fort Niagara, but disaster overtook him, though he led an expedition against the Iroquois, routed a force of Indians and Tories at Newtown, near the present Elmira, and wrought wide devastation in the country of the Cayugas and Senecas.
Yorktown led to the Treaty of Versailles and independence, but oddly enough it was almost a generation before a third flag arose above the historic "Castle" at the mouth of the Niagara. In 1784 the United States came into the control of the territory extending from Nova Scotia (which then included New Brunswick) to the head of the Lake of the Woods and to the Mississippi River in the West, and in the North from Canada to the Floridas in the South, the latter having again become Spanish possessions. The boundary between Nova Scotia and the Republic was so ill defined that it took over fifty years to fix the St. Croix and the Highlands which were, by the treaty, to divide the two countries. In the Far West the line of division was to be drawn through the Lake of the Woods "to the most north-western point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the River Mississippi"—a physical impossibility, since the head of the Mississippi, as was afterwards found, was a hundred miles or so to the south! In later times this geographical error was corrected, and the curious distortion of the boundary line that now appears on the maps was necessary at the Lake of the Woods in order to strike the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, which was subsequently arranged as the boundary line as far as the Rocky Mountains.