Before, during, and after the American Revolution, patriots (and then citizens of the United States) assumed that the provinces that became Canada would join their cause. Why would anyone reject the calls for “liberty” and “freedom”? As it turns out, white settlers and Indigenous nations understood what patriots were doing and rejected it, the consequences of which forced American citizens to reimagine their own identities and possible futures.
Jeffers Lennox is an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University. His most recent book is North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution (Yale, 2022). He is currently a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow at the New York Historical Society.
Part of the Kennedy Center's fall 2023 lecture series, "Preserving and Transforming Culture."