GENERAL HULL’S PROCLAMATION

“Inhabitants of Canada! After thirty years of peace and prosperity, the United States have been driven to arms. The injuries and aggressions, the insults and indignities of Great Britain, have once more left them no alternative but manly resistance or unconditional submission.

“The army under my command has invaded your country, and the standard of Union now waves over the territory of Canada. To the peaceable, unoffending inhabitant it brings neither danger nor difficulty. I come to find enemies, not to make them. I come to protect, not to injure you.

“Separated by an immense ocean and an extensive wilderness from Great Britain, you have no participation in her councils, no interest in her conduct. You have felt her tyranny, you have seen her injustice, but I do not ask you to avenge the one or redress the other. The United States are sufficiently powerful to afford you every security consistent with their rights and your expectations. I tender you the invaluable blessings of civil, political, and religious liberty, and their necessary result, individual and general prosperity—that liberty which gave decision to our councils and energy to our struggle for independence, and which conducted us safely and triumphantly through the stormy period of the revolution; that liberty which has raised us to an elevated rank among the nations of the world, and which has afforded us a greater measure of peace and security, of wealth and improvement, than ever yet fell to the lot of any people.

“In the name of my country, and by the authority of my government, I promise protection to your persons, property, and rights. Remain at your homes, pursue your peaceful and customary avocations, raise not your hands against your brethren. Many of your fathers fought for the freedom and independence which we now enjoy. Being children, therefore, of the same family with us, and heirs to the same heritage, the arrival of an army of friends must be hailed by you with a cordial welcome. You will be emancipated from tyranny and oppression and restored to the dignified station of freemen. Had I any doubt of eventual success I might ask your assistance, but I do not. I come prepared for every contingency. I have a force which will look down all opposition, and that force is but the vanguard of a much greater. If, contrary to your own interests and the just expectation of my country, you should take part in the approaching contest, you will be considered and treated as enemies, and the horrors and calamities of war will stalk before you. If the barbarous and savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages be let loose to murder our citizens and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination. The first stroke of the tomahawk, the first attempt with the scalping-knife, will be the signal of one indiscriminate scene of desolation. No white man found fighting by the side of an Indian will be taken prisoner; instant destruction will be his lot. If the dictates of reason, duty, justice, and humanity cannot prevent the employment of a force which respects no rights and knows no wrong, it will be prevented by a severe and relentless system of retaliation.

“I doubt not your courage and firmness. I will not doubt your attachment to liberty. If you tender your services voluntarily, they will be accepted readily. The United States offer you peace, liberty, and security. Your choice lies between these and war, slavery, and destruction. Choose then, but choose wisely, and may He who knows the justice of our cause, and who holds in His hands the fate of nations guide you to a result the most compatible with your rights and interests, your peace and prosperity.

BROCK’S PROCLAMATION

“The unprovoked declaration of war by the United States of America against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its dependencies has been followed by the actual invasion of this province, in a remote frontier of the western district, by a detachment of the armed force of the United States.

“The officer commanding that detachment has thought proper to invite His Majesty’s subjects, not merely to a quiet and unresisting submission, but insults them with a call to seek voluntarily the protection of his government.

“Without condescending to repeat the illiberal epithets bestowed in this appeal of the American commander to the people of Upper Canada, on the administration of His Majesty, every honest inhabitant of the province is desired to seek the confutation of such indecent slander in the review of his own particular circumstances. Where is the Canadian subject who can truly affirm to himself that he has been injured by the government in his person, his property, or his liberty? Where is to be found, in any part of the world, a growth so rapid in prosperity and wealth as this colony exhibits? Settled not thirty years by a band of veterans exiled from their former possessions on account of their loyalty, not a descendant of these brave people is to be found who, under the fostering liberality of their sovereign, has not acquired a property and means of enjoyment superior to what were possessed by their ancestors. This unequalled prosperity would not have been attained by the utmost liberality of the government, or the persevering industry of the people, had not the maritime power of the mother country secured to its colonists a safe access to every market where the produce of their labor was in request. The unavoidable and immediate consequences of a separation from Great Britain must be the loss of this inestimable advantage; and what is offered you in exchange? To become a territory of the United States, and share with them that exclusion from the ocean which the policy of their government enforces; you are not even flattered with a participation of their boasted independence, and it is but too obvious that, once estranged from the powerful protection of the United Kingdom, you must be re-annexed to the dominion of France, from which the provinces of Canada were wrested by the arms of Great Britain, at a vast expense of blood and treasure, from no other motive than to relieve her ungrateful children from the oppression of a cruel neighbor. This restitution of Canada to the empire of France was the stipulated reward for the aid afforded to the revolted colonies, now the United States. The debt is still due, and there can be no doubt that the pledge has been renewed as a consideration for commercial advantages, or rather for an expected relaxation of the tyranny of France over the commercial world. Are you prepared, inhabitants of Canada, to become willing subjects—or rather slaves—to the despot who rules the nations of continental Europe with a rod of iron? If not, arise in a body, exert your energies, co-operate cordially with the king’s regular forces to repel the invader, and do not give cause to your children, when groaning under the oppression of a foreign master, to reproach you with having so easily parted with the richest inheritance of this earth—a participation in the name, character, and freedom of Britons.

“The same spirit of justice, which will make every reasonable allowance for the unsuccessful efforts of zeal and loyalty, will not fail to punish the defalcation of principle. Every Canadian freeholder is, by deliberate choice, bound by the most solemn oaths to defend the monarchy as well as his own property. To shrink from that engagement is a treason not to be forgiven. Let no man suppose that if, in this unexpected struggle, His Majesty’s arms should be compelled to yield to an overwhelming force, the province will be eventually abandoned; the endeared relation of its first settlers, the intrinsic value of its commerce, and the pretension of its powerful rival to repossess the Canadas, are pledges that no peace will be established between the United States and Great Britain and Ireland, of which the restoration of these provinces does not make the most prominent condition. Be not dismayed at the unjustifiable threat of the commander of the enemy’s forces to refuse quarter should an Indian appear in the ranks. The brave band of aborigines who inhabit this colony were, like His Majesty’s other subjects, punished for their zeal and fidelity by the loss of their possessions in the late colonies, and rewarded by His Majesty with lands of superior value in this province. The faith of the British government has never yet been violated; the Indians feel that the soil they inherit is to them and their posterity protected from the base arts so frequently devised to over-reach their simplicity. By what new principle are they to be prohibited from defending their property? If their warfare, from being different to that of the white people, be more terrific to the enemy, let him retrace his steps. They seek him not, and he cannot expect to find women and children in an invading army. But they are men, and have equal rights with all other men to defend themselves and their property when invaded, more especially when they find in the enemy’s camp a ferocious and mortal foe using the same warfare which the American commander affects to reprobate. The inconsistent and unjustifiable threat of refusing quarter, for such a cause as being found in arms with a brother sufferer in defence of invaded rights, must be exercised with the certain assurance of retaliation, not only in the limited operations of war in this part of the king’s dominions, but in every quarter of the globe; for the national character of Britain is not less distinguished for humanity than strict retributive justice, which will consider the execution of this inhuman threat as deliberate murder, for which every subject of the offending power must make expiation.”