Guy Carleton

British military leader and administrator

• Born: September 3, 1724
• Birthplace: Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland
• Died: November 10, 1808
• Place of death: Stubbings, Berkshire, England

Carleton’s competent military leadership and adroit political sensitivity helped ease the transition of Canada from its position as conquered French province to prosperous English colony.

Early Life

Guy Carleton was the son of Christopher Carleton, a member of the Irish landowning class, and Katherine Ball, from County Donegal. The first years of Guy’s life were spent securely in the prosperity of the Irish country gentry. When he was fourteen, however, his father died. His mother then married the Reverend Mr. Thomas Skelton. Although his stepfather’s biographer later would claim that Guy owed his education to Skelton’s interest, the interval between his father’s death and Carleton’s commission as an ensign in the British army suggests otherwise. Since most young men of the eighteenth century had completed their education by the age of fourteen (unless they were bound for the university), it seems unlikely that an unhappy adolescent could have been educated in four years.

Carleton began his long career in the British army on May 21, 1742, at age seventeen, when he became an ensign in the Twenty-fifth Regiment of Foot. The time at which Carleton entered the king’s service would have been an exciting one for a young officer. England was engaged in a war that had begun in the Caribbean in 1739 and broadened into the War of the Austrian Succession by 1742. Against this background of crisis he was promoted to lieutenant within three years.

He did not experience his first foreign campaign until the French and Indian War. Promoted in 1757 to captain lieutenant in the First Regiment of Foot Guards, he would serve with that unit at the first Siege of Louisbourg in 1758. So impressive was his service there that he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in America.

Life’s Work

Guy Carleton’s career as officer and administrator in the British colonial service had begun. His outstanding service and bravery under fire earned for him a promotion to colonel in 1762 and the appointment to the post of lieutenant governor of Quebec in 1766.

With his succession to the governorship of Quebec after James Murray’s resignation in 1767, Carleton inherited all the problems peculiar to governing a colony of foreign nationals. On the one hand, he had to administer the laws to the inhabitants who had populated Canada at the time of its transfer—French-speaking Roman Catholics accustomed to a rather tightly controlled government. On the other hand, there were his recently arrived countrymen, each seeking fortune in Great Britain’s new acquisition. These newcomers would request special treatment. Further compounding Carleton’s difficulties was factionalism within the English community.

In Governor Carleton’s observation, the absence of a constitutional basis for government in Quebec demanded that action be taken by Parliament. The citizens of Canada could not be treated forever as conquered subjects. Some legislative foundation had to be laid, therefore, for building a peace-time government satisfactory to all—the king, Parliament, Governor Carleton, the French inhabitants, and the English settlers.

In August of 1770, however, Carleton returned to England on leave. He hoped that while in London he might consult the imperial authorities for assistance not only in settling disputes between the vying factions but also in persuading royal officials that constitutional legislation for Quebec was imperative. Not all of his time was spent consulting with members of officialdom, however, for during his sojourn, the handsome and aristocratic Carleton married Lady Maria Howard and fathered two children.

During his relatively brief experience as governor, he had drawn two conclusions that fundamentally shaped his perceptions about the nature of Canadian society. First, and most fundamentally erroneous, he concluded that the French Canadian landowners, known as seigneurs, were politically adroit and powerful as well as possessed of the military skill and the knowledge and influence of an English country squire. Second, he believed that in the light of increasing unrest in the colonies to the south, the best choice for the British Empire would be to keep Canada as French as possible and thus out of the arms of the American “troublemakers.”

Accordingly, Carleton was instrumental in shaping the Quebec Act, which Parliament passed in 1774. Over time, the act has been called many things. American revolutionary leaders denounced it as a Jesuitical decree, English legislators regarded it as a necessary expedient, and some historians have judged it a piece of enlightened statesmanship. One scholar describes the act as “drafted in close consultation with Guy Carleton, in accordance with the plans formulated by him during his administration of Quebec—plans formulated quite frankly with a view to military action on the continent as well as to defence against a French invasion.”

Essentially, Quebec needed constitutional legislation, in part because earlier attempts by governors had failed to solve existing problems, but more significantly because permanent foundation for government was long overdue. Three basic matters needed to be addressed: laws and government, religion, and revenue. The last could be treated separately, and was, in the Quebec Revenue Act, which taxed imported rum and molasses.

The other two issues, however, would be addressed within the Quebec Act, which provided for law and government within a newly enlarged geographic region. By the stipulations of this legislation, the boundaries of Quebec included land already claimed by the Thirteen Colonies. Yet from the administrative viewpoint this extension was necessary in order to extend government to the former French settlements in the Illinois country. Throughout Quebec the populations would be subject to English criminal law, but for purposes of civil suits, they would be regulated by the laws and customs of French Canada. The Roman Catholic Church was recognized, the clergy was allowed to administer the Sacraments, and communicants were extended civil equality. No representative legislature was provided, but a council was established, composed of twenty-three members who could pass ordinance with the consent of the governor.

Thus armed with a foundation for civil government, not to mention a French-educated wife and two infant children, Carleton returned to Quebec in 1774. Almost immediately he was confronted with resistance to the Quebec Act. The English merchant faction complained and petitioned for its repeal. They opposed the unfamiliar French civil law, which they could not manipulate. Protest was also voiced by newly arrived English settlers from the Thirteen Colonies, who saw the act as a check on traditional English liberties.

Such political considerations quickly were eclipsed by new military demands. To the south, the protests against England prompted General Thomas Gage, the British commander in chief in North America, to request regulars from Canada as reinforcements. In effect, Carleton stripped his colony of forces that he later would need.

At the time Carleton dispatched these units to Gage, he had no reason to hesitate. By the spring of 1775, however, Canada was being threatened. Reports reached Carleton that an American expedition was headed northward. Without his regulars, Carleton faced the necessity of ordering the Canadian militia into service. His earlier misperception of the influence of the seigneurs rose to haunt him. Because these landowners had no real power, the habitants simply refused to muster into the militia. In effect, Carleton was powerless, dependent on the whim of a fickle populace. The failure of the American invaders to capture all of Canada had as much to do with inadequate supplies, troop shortages, and difficult weather as with General Carleton’s genius. Carleton and his spirited forces, however, did hold on until a rescue fleet arrived in the spring of 1776. Although Carleton was hailed as a hero and awarded the Order of the Knight of Bath, his detractors would note his failure to follow and crush the retreating invaders.

After the withdrawal of the Americans, Carleton still faced the difficulties of governing a divided colony. The French habitants were no more supportive than ever; indeed, the governor had to send investigators to seek out those who had aided the enemy during the invasion. In dealing with the habitants on this matter, as in other matters, the governor depended on the assistance of the Roman Catholic clergy, which was, by and large, supportive of the government that supported them.

One of Carleton’s most acute problems resulted from his clash with Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies. From the time Germain took office in 1775, friction between the two arose as both issued commissions for government appointments in Canada, each assuming such to be his right. This difficulty reached a crisis point in 1778 when the chief justice of Canada, a Germain appointee named Peter Livius, challenged Carleton’s authority. Already bitterly disappointed because he had been passed over for the command of an expedition from Canada into the Thirteen Colonies in 1777, the sensitive officer took this incident with Livius as the last straw; he dismissed the chief justice and returned to England in 1778.

Carleton’s North American service was by no means over, for he would be asked to serve there in two more important assignments. First, in 1782, he was requested to return to North America as commander in chief, charged with the oversight of withdrawing British troops and emigrating Loyalists. His firm but humane handling of that crucial phase of the American war brought him the thanks of Parliament in the form of a pension of œ1,000 a year for life. Earlier he had been promoted to lieutenant general and made governor of Charlemont in Ireland.

Significance

Despite more than forty years of service, the still energetic Sir Guy Carleton was not ready to enter retirement at age sixty-two. Again he sailed for America in 1786, answering the king’s call to govern Canada. So grateful was the king that he gave Carleton a title of nobility in 1786, naming him First Baron (Lord) Dorchester.

Lord Dorchester’s term as governor of Canada would last for ten years, from 1786 to 1796. Still convinced that his assessment of Canadian society was accurate, he governed largely as he had before, depending on his highly popular pro-French wife to win the hearts of the Canadians. Even so, the old tensions were still there, with his staunch allies, the seigneurs, whom he called the “Canadian gentlemen,” continuing to oppose an elected assembly, fearing representative government would deprive them of their vested status. The English merchants and their allies still clamored for an assembly and English commercial law.

The governor and his supporters, however, were opposing the inevitable, for England did not wish to lose its second empire as it had a large part of its first. Before the end of Carleton’s second term, changes were in the making. Canada was to be divided into Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower Canada (now Quebec). In Parliament, moreover, legislation had been introduced that would establish an elected assembly, an appointed upper house, and a governor’s executive council.

Whatever changes were to occur in Canada’s future governmental development, Carleton could retire to England, confident that he had served both Quebec and England long and well. Indeed, while in Canada he had been promoted to the highest rank in the service, general in the army. He had presided effectively, even if in an authoritarian manner, over one of England’s most important parts of empire during two extremely critical periods. The stability the soldier-statesman provided had assisted Quebec in a peaceful transition from defeat to prosperity within the growing British Empire.

A final note of irony may be found in his last journey back to England: Carleton’s ship was wrecked while it was still in North American waters. Fortunately, no one was hurt, all on board were rescued, and Carleton and his party soon found passage on another vessel bound for home. Thus he had survived the military battlefield, the minefields of political dispute, and a shipwreck, in a lifetime of service to his king. Ever the heroic figure of military bearing, he could spend the last dozen years of his life in retirement content in the company of his wife and their nine sons and daughters.

Bibliography

Burt, Alfred L. The Old Province of Quebec. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1933. This is the standard of scholarship on Quebec against which all other works are measured.

Coupland, Reginald. The Quebec Act: A Study in Statesmanship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Originally published in 1925, this proimperial study is highly laudatory toward Carleton, whose “influence on the shaping of the future destinies of Canada was stronger than that of any man of his time.” Coupland describes Governor Carleton as the “chief and the most closely questioned witness before the House of Commons” on the Quebec Act.

Lawson, Philip. The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. Examines how the conquest of Quebec affected British policies and imperial beliefs, eventually leading to the passage of the Quebec Act.

Mackesy, Piers. The War for America, 1775-1783. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. In this study of the struggle for independence by the Thirteen Colonies, the author presents a balanced view of the contribution of Carleton and his role as governor, officer, and, ultimately, commander in chief.

Neatby, Hilda. The Quebec Act: Protest and Policy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Although basically a book of documents in a series on Canadian historical controversies, there is a useful assessment both of the Quebec Act and historians’ attitudes toward it. Neatby’s book is helpful to anyone who wishes to understand the act and Carleton’s role in its adoption.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 1760-1790. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, 1966. A volume in the Canadian Centenary series, this study incorporates Carleton into the larger scope of Canada’s history during the first three decades of its English history. Overall, it presents a balanced view of the general and governor.

Nelson, Paul David. General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester: Solider-Statesman of Early British Canada. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. A thorough and scholarly biography of Carleton.

Smith, Paul H. “Sir Guy Carleton: Soldier-Statesman.” In George Washington’s Opponents: British Generals and Admirals in the American Revolution, edited by George A. Billias. New York: William Morrow, 1969. Although Smith is interested primarily in Carleton as a military commander, he cannot ignore his dual role as commander and governor.