Madelaine Drohan, Washington Post - I recently reread a letter Congress sent to Canadians, inviting them to join the emerging American union. Aside from the veiled threats about what would happen if Canadians did not accept the offer, as well as a couple of digs about their inferior status, it contains some stirring stuff about what Americans stood for and hoped to achieve. I use the past tense because the country’s current political leadership does not appear to support these ideals.
For those of you scratching your heads — letter? what letter? — it was written in 1774, when Canadians and Americans were fellow British colonists. (Yes, some Americans have been eyeing Canada for that long.) It was sent to the Province of Quebec by delegates to the First Continental Congress, including Founding Fathers George Washington, John Adams and John Jay. In it, they described in glowing terms the country they sought to build and the values that would serve as its foundation.
They thought — wrongly, as it turned out — that the Canadians of that era, who were overwhelmingly French-speaking and Catholic, could not help but see that it was in their best interests to join a group of English-speaking Protestants in their fight with the British government. (The Declaration of Independence was still on the horizon.)
The letter is worth reading today because the delegates laid out the things they thought made their system of governance so much better than what existed in British-ruled Canada. They also listed the rights French Canadians were entitled to as “English freemen.” It is unclear whether they had a tin ear or whether they honestly thought French Canadians would want to see themselves as English.
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