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circumstances made it all but impossible for them to join their cause.
Finally, even in Glasgow some residents harbored pro-American views, while most of the city's
but impossible to join their cause.
The prominent merchants opted for neutrality in hopes the war would end quicky
and their valuable Atlantic trade would be saved.
-a new, shared understanding of Loyalism con-
The British common cause constructed by Loyalist writers in the winter and spring of 1774-75 -struggled to convince a majority of Britons that the Patriot cause was dangerous and that Patriot leaders and their supporters were a legitimate threat to the nation. The absence of a shared narrative of British patriotism, ,distinguishable from that of the rebellious colonists, further fractured the empire and | left loyal Britons to question what it meant to be British. In September 1774, delegates to the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Claiming to represent the interests of subjects from Nova Scotia to Georgia, their expressed purpose was t to find a peaceful solution to the increasing tensions between colonists and imperial officials. & Over the previous spring and summer, communities a Cross the Eastern Seaboard of British North America reacted to news of Parliament's decision to punish Bostonians for the destruction of tea by pushing for new boycotts and I forming extralegal committees to aid their New England brethren. The Coercive Acts, intended to make an example of the Massachusetts colony, instead excited the fears of Colonists everywhere that similar forms of tyranny might visit their own towns and villages should they not make a stand.
Radical Whigs in New York City formed a committee in August to help Bostonians. When a false rumor spread through the city the following month
that Gage had burned Boston to the ground, crowds threatened merchants
ship owners, and artificers not to aid Gage and his soldiers in that town. Some
Haligonians also took a stand. In July, residents attempted, unsuccessfully, to
stop the landing of East India Company tea in the city.° The colony's obstinate new governor, Francis Legge, arrested the alleged ringleaders and ordered a ban on unlawful assemblies that "promote illegal Confederacies, Combinations, public Disorders and the highest Contempt of Government." Apparently, not all Haligonians listened, as reports circulated that 'subscriptions are
opened" in Halifax to send relief to Bostonians., 12 On the eve of the delegates
meeting in Philadelphia, Holt reported in his Journal that "the provinces of
New York, Philadelphia, South and North Carolina. Nova Scotia, and Halta,
have heartily entered into the American cause."13
Colonists turned out in number to aid Bostonians. while members of Congress expressed their disapproval of the new legislation. The Coercive Acts deprived Massachusetts colonists of those rights cherished most by subjects....
KING-KILLING REPUBLICANS
everywhere. Crucially, though, these new laws did little to change the radical
Whig narrative of the previous decade, which continued to frame Parliament
109
as corrupt and i prone to tyranny.
Act, on the other
hand, was of even greater concern to many
The Quebec
colonial subjects. In the months before the beginning of the war, Patriot writ-
ers from Virginia to Massachusetts fashioned a new narrative of the now
decade-long imperial crisis by turning to a very old rhetorical weapon.4 Tyranny now was not some abstract Dickinsonian concept, the consequence of corrupt officials or a faltering political system, but rather the product of a government that had succumbed to popery and was now conspiring with Catholics to destroy the freedoms of British subjects. Even more than the shutting
down of Massachusetts's government and economy, the Quebec Act encouraged. Britons across the Atlantic to embrace a nascent common cause that
found meaning in their shared fears of popish tyranny.
Moderates and radicals in Congress wrote incessantly against the destructive consequences of the Quebec. Act, despite the fact that the Act did not directly affect the fourteen colonies they purportedly represented." John Adams,
along with many other members of Congress, loathed the legislation, scribbling in the margins of his diary the dire consequences if colonists-
Congress--did not make a stand.
-and
Proof of Depth of Abilities, and Wickedness of Heart.
Precedent. Lords refusal of perpetual Imprisonment.
Prerogative to give any Government to a conquered People.
Romish Religion.
Feudal Government.
Union of feudal Law and Romish Superstition.
Knights of Malta. Orders of military Monks.
Goths and Vandals overthrew the roman Empire.
Danger to us all. An House on fire.l6
In their various petitions and address, many of which made their way into
tie pages of newspapers across the empire, members of Congress repeatedly
claimed that the ultimate purpose of the legislation was to use French Catholics as
a "fit instrument" to violently suppress the rights and liberties of American colonists. The Memorial to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies warned
readers "that the [French Canadians), deprived of liberty and artfully provoked
against those of another religion, will be proper instruments for assisting in the oppression of such as differ from them in modes of government and faith"17 "The radical Suffolk Resolves, endorsed by Congress in September, argued
for the arming of citizens because, among other things, the Quebec Act "is...
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dangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant religion and to the civil
rights and liberties of all America,"I8 New York delegate John Jay wrote in an
Address to the People of Great Britain that Canada was "daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe. (who) might become formidable to us, and
on occasion, be fit instruments in the hands of power, to reduce the ancient
free Protestant Colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves," Delegates to Congress defended their adoption of the Continental Association
which created extralegal committees in every city in the colonies to enforce
their new boycott, by arguing that the Quebec Act encouraged French Canadians "to act with hostility against the free Protestant Colonies, whenever a
wicked Ministry shall choose so to direct them,"20 Perhaps Adams's diary scribbles were not hyperbole, for delegates warned colonists that the Quebec
really could set their houses on fire.
These petitions and addresses helped to generate (as delegates had hoped
the incipient beginnings of a shared narrative- a common cause- -among the
growing number of opponents to British policies. The Quebec Act was
cial to this emerging narrative. Congress's message, that the bill was to be used
as "fit instrument" to bring death and destruction upon innocent American
colonists, was repeated over and over again in reports that circulated through
out the British Atlantic press in the months before Lexington and Concord
This narrative played particularly well in New York City and Halifax, where
residents lived in such close proximity to their old enemies. Late in 1774, for
instance, when Carleton was supposedly "kissed by the Bishop," New York
ers read a short soliloquy allegedly written by Lord North, who believed his
best hope of restoring order rested on raising a "Popish army'" in Canada that
would be "glad to cut the throats of those heretics, the Bostonians. "21 Another
widely shared report claimed Carleton had actually received orders "to embody
thirty thousand Roman Catholic Canadians immediately asa militia," who are to
act "under the same military law as regular troops. »22
Worse yet, still more reports began to appear that the Quebec Act--and
the alleged arming of Catholic Canadians-was part of an even more sinister
plot to reinstate the Stuart dynasty to the throne. "The Chevalier seems to derive some Hopes from the Discontent which this new Doctrine may create,
Holt reported in early November, "nor will he refuse to take the Coronation
Oath to gain a Kingdom he so highly longs to govern." Holt also included a
letter from a Parisian who claimed that"a great English Peer" was making his
way to that city to meet with the Young Pretender, Charles Stuart, "and there
are Whispers here, that certain Engagements made in the Year 1745, are to be
the chief Subject of conversation.25 For some colonists then, the decision to
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KING-KILLING REPUBLICANS
111
mobilize in defense of their rights and liberties was inspired, in part, out of a
fear of a potential third Jacobite rebellion.
f the Quebec bill appealed to colonists' innermost fears he spread of pop
ery-it also drew upon their more reasoned sensibilities. In giving assent to a
bill that promoted Catholicism within the empire, George III betrayed one of
his most important responsibilities as king: to act as the protector of the Protes-
tant faith, 24 Doing so was a breach of his coronation oath and, according to
Some colonists, a legal justification to absolve their allegiance to the monarch.
Though Congress avoided making such claims, Patriot writers frequently de-
nounced the king's actions in " giving his royal assent to the obnoxious Quebec
bill. and thereby breaking his coronation oath."35 In October, New Yorkers read
"EPIGRAM, on the QUEBEC BILL" that placed George Il alongside two
an
notorious British monarchs, whose support of Catholic policies cost them the
throne, implicitly suggesting that the former deserved a similar fate:
COULD James the Second leave his Grave,
Or Charles peep up, without his Head,
How the two royal Knaves would rave
To find a Parliament so bread!
To join the King, and the Religion own,
For which one lost his Head, and one his Crown!26
The threat posed by the Quebec Act did not replace decade-long concerns
over the increasingly arbitrary policies of Parliament. But it did shift the conver-
sation away from the corruption of government officials to another, more dan-
gerous narrative: Parliament, and perhaps even the king, were no longer British.
Tradition gave this narrative its heft. It was steeped in a century of British preju-
dice. Anti-Catholicism resonated because of how deeply it was embedded in the
very notion of what it meant to be British in the eighteenth century. Long before
Thomas Paine's Common Sense, some Britons were beginning to consider that
their political opponents were no longer like them and their system of govern-
ment had given in to a form of tyranny that could not be negotiated with.
In New York City, radical Whigs grew in strength and numbers in the weeks
and months after the meeting of the First Congress, motivated in part by the
many declarations against the Quebec Act. In November, one resident called
lor the raising of an army after having read repeated "accounts of orders be-
ng sent to Canada, for embodying the militia, who, in conjunction with the
Indians, are to cooperate with a Roman catholic General ... to rob, enslave
and murder their fellow subjects. "2" At the same time, the moderate Commit-
tee of Fifty-One, formed in the spring to respond to the Coercive Acts, gave...
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