User:Mathieugp/Drafts/Philip J. Schuyler to Canadian Citizens, September 5, 1775

To the Inhabitants of Canada

Friends and Countrymen,

The various causes, that have drove the ancient British Colonies in America to arms, have been so fully set forth in the several petitions, papers, letters and declarations published by the Grand Congress, that our Canadian brothers, at the extirpation of whose Liberty, as well as ours, the various schemes of a cruel ministry are directly tending, cannot fail of being informed thereof. And we cannot doubt that you are pleased that the grand Congress have ordered an army into Canada, to expel from thence, if possible, those British troops which, now acting under the orders of a despotic ministry, would wish to enslave their countrymen.

This measure, necessary as it is, the Congress would not have entered on but in the fullest confidence that it would be perfectly agreeable to you, for, judging of your feelings by their own, they could not conceive that any thing but the force of necessity would induce you tamely to bear the insult and ignominy that are daily imposed on you, or that you could calmly sit by and see those chains forging which are intended to bind you, your posterity and ours, in one common and eternal slavery. To secure you and ourselves from such a dreadful bondage; to prevent the effects that might follow from the ministerial troops remaining in Canada; to restore to you those rights which every subject of the British Empire, from the highest to the very lowest order, whatever his religious sentiments may be, is entitled to, are the only views of the Congress. You will readily believe me, when I say that the Congress have given me the most positive orders, to cherish every Canadian and every friend to the cause of liberty, and sacredly to guard their property; and such is the confidence I have in the good disposition of my army that I do not believe I shall have reason to punish a single offense committed against you.

A treaty of friendship has just been concluded with the Six Nations at Albany, and I am furnished with an ample present of their Caughnawaga brethren and other Canadian tribes. If any of them have lost their lives it was done contrary to my orders, and by scoundrels ill-affected to our glorious cause. I shall take great pleasure in burying the dead, and wiping away the tears of their surviving relations, which you will communicate to them.