“The Unanimous Voice of the Continent is Canada must be ours.

“The Unanimous Voice of the Continent is Canada must be ours. Quebec must be taken.” So wrote John Adams in a letter sent #OTD Feb. 18, 1776, to fellow revolutionary James Warren.

At the time, the Continental Army occupied Montreal and Trois-Rivières and were laying siege to Quebec City, the last major population centre in the British colony.

Adams said that if the British kept Canada “it would enable them to inflame all the Indians upon the Continent, and perhaps induce them to take up the Hatchet, and commit their Robberies and Murders upon the Frontiers of all the southern Colonies as well as to pour down Regulars, Canadians and Indians together upon the Borders of the Northern.”

He seemed heartened by the decision to send Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton to Montreal to salvage the faltering invasion. “These three Gentlemen compose a Committee, which I think promises great Things,” he told Warren.

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