Available for the first time in English, the 1776 journal of Francois Baby, Gabriel Taschereau, and Jenkin Williams provides an insight into the failure to incite rebellion in Quebec by American revolutionaries. While other sources have shown how British soldiers and civilians and the French-Canadian gentry (the seigneurs) responded to the American invasion of 1775 1776, this journal focuses on French-Canadian peasants (les habitants) who made up the vast majority of the population; in other words, the journal helps explain why Quebec did not become the "fourteenth colony."
After...