Abstract

This article examines the consequences of the 1775 Battle of Quebec—a frequently overlooked defeat for American Patriots, yet the key battle in a campaign that proved one of the most influential of the Revolution. Usually dismissed as merely a failed military operation, the American invasion of Canada played a central role in the movement for American independence. That fall, American revolutionaries invaded Canada in the hope of winning a fourteenth colony for the cause. Despite several initial victories, a crushing repulse on December 31 left Major General Richard Montgomery dead, Colonel Benedict Arnold hospitalized, and nearly a third of the Northern Army in the hands of the British. Losing Canada shook colonial confidence in the war effort and deflated hopes for favorable reconciliation. Even more than Thomas Paine's Common Sense, defeat at Quebec lent crucial support to the urgent argument against reconciliation and led the Continental Congress to prepare for the inevitability of a long war and the necessity of a declaration of independence.

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