The Fantasy of Annexing Canada Has a Long and Mortifying History

Opinion|Take It From Ben Franklin: Attempts to Annex Canada End ‘Pitifully Unwell’

President Trump’s creepy remarks about Canada as “our cherished 51st state” may seem to have descended, bafflingly, from the clear blue sky. But American designs on Canada have a long history, predating even our independence and featuring some very familiar names. “You are a small people,” concluded one early overture, “compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship.” The approaches have changed over time, but the courtship has invariably played out with all the grace and romance of Pepé Le Pew on the trail of Penelope Pussycat. On several occasions, it has blown up in our faces. “Alas, Canada, we have had misfortune and disgrace in that quarter,” John Adams warned some 250 years ago. As another president now hints at a northern expansion, we might care to remember the humbling earlier forays.

In October 1774, the First Continental Congress resolved to dispatch an appeal to Quebec, which was then essentially a synonym for Canada. Over 18 eloquent pages, the letter enumerated the rights of a free people. Though it urged no acts of hostility, it reminded the Canadians that they could expect no better treatment from their common sovereign than did their American counterparts. Might they care to travel — “in order to complete this highly desirable union” — to Philadelphia for the next Congress, in May? To the high-minded rhetoric was added a prod: Canada would be wise to count the rest of North America among its “unalterable friends” rather than its “inveterate enemies.”

Though no Canadian delegates materialized in Philadelphia that May, Congress remained undeterred. A new letter went out “to the oppressed inhabitants of Canada,” this one drafted by John Jay. British rule, the letter argued, reduced Canadians to slavery and endangered their religious freedom. “We can never believe that the present race of Canadians are so degenerated as to possess neither the spirit, the gallantry, nor the courage of their ancestors,” the letter continued. How would they explain their cowardice to their children? It ended with a familiar threat: The Americans hoped the Canadians would not “reduce us to the disagreeable necessity of treating you as enemies.”

Before it adjourned in August 1775, Congress authorized an invasion of Canada. In a full-battalion-to-remind-you-of-my-love kind of missive, George Washington informed the Canadians that Benedict Arnold was heading their way with a detachment. “Come then, my brethren,” he wrote, “unite with us in an indissoluble union, and let us run together to the same goal.”

Congress was sanguine about the prospects, expecting, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “every hour to be informed that Quebec has opened its arms to Colonel Arnold.” Around the time Washington was writing his hopeful letter, Arnold and his ludicrously ill-equipped men were surviving on dead dogs and boiled cartridge belts.

Though the siege of Quebec proved a disaster, Congress continued to believe the Canadians were eager to join their revolt. “The unanimous voice of the continent is Canada must be ours, Quebec must be taken,” crowed John Adams in February. Congress that month opted for diplomacy, appointing a commission that consisted of Charles Carroll, among the wealthiest men in America and a French-speaking Catholic; his Jesuit cousin, Father John Carroll; and two members of Congress. The eldest of the group, the longtime colonial fixer and the American with the greatest experience of the wider world, was Benjamin Franklin.