Word: quebecers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sometimes overlooked that the ambitious American policy drew much of its impetus from the Quebec Act, that tyrannical but farsighted statute by which George Ill's ministers reorganized the status of Canada within the Empire two years ago. The act denied Canadians both self-government and the right to trial by jury. But it confirmed the nearly feudal authority of the French landowning seigneurs, established the freedom (and thus the power) of Roman Catholicism in Canada, and granted to Canada great tracts of land spreading westward along the Ohio River...
Partly because several colonies (notably Virginia) lay claim to these same lands, American leaders regarded the Quebec Act as one of the so-called "Intolerable Acts" of the British government. Radicals were also incensed at a new abridgment of civil liberties. New Englanders were fearful of the apparent revival of a powerful Catholic neighbor to the north. (A 19-year-old student at King's College in New York, Alexander Hamilton, even wrote a pamphlet suggesting that the Inquisition would be reborn and might soon be burning heretics at the stake in America...
...influence of the church. The results are by now only too well known: as General Montgomery fought his way northward, occupying St. John's and Montreal, he enlisted few Canadian recruits despite his generous bonus offer. That virtually doomed the expedition even before the defeat last January at Quebec, where Montgomery was killed...
...Congress had speedily reinforced the fewer than 1,000 able-bodied American troops besieging Quebec, a notable military victory might still have been won. But the British had already sent their own reinforcements before 6,000 Continental regulars and militia finally arrived in Canada in May. The besiegers fled southward. Even after they had united with the fresh troops, a large contingent of the American forces was routed midway between Quebec and Montreal. After struggling to He aux Noix below St. John's, they began dying by the hundreds from smallpox and dysentery. Of that fine force, fewer than...
...problems like planning and supply. Putnam is presently second in command in New York. To help him with administration Washington has assigned him an aide from his own staff, Major Aaron Burr, 20, a sparrow-sized scholar from Princeton, New Jersey, who fought with distinction in the battle for Quebec...