An American was hanged for treason as an example to les Canadiens

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Friday, July 7, 1797, American david mclane stood before Lower Canada’s Chief Justice William Osgoode to learn his fate. Having been found guilty of high treason, he was sentenced to be hanged, but not until death; to be disembowelled while still alive and then to be quartered and, afterward, to have his head severed from his body.

What was his crime to warrant such a gruesome sentence?

In 1792 Elmer Cushing founded the American Coffee House in Montreal. Initially successful, by 1797 he was seriously in debt and teetering on the verge of financial ruin. That was when Mclane, one of his hostel guests, confided in him the details of a plot organized in the United States and backed by France to invade and capture New France.

The English-dominated Legislative Council had no idea how French Canadians would react to such an invasion, and they lived in an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. The rebels who led the American War of Independence had already tried to capture Canada, but not with the French flag waving at the head of their troops. To add to their concerns, the French were actively trying to get Louisiana back from the Spanish, and were supporting Thomas Jefferson for president, expecting that the Americans would help them invade and retake New France. Some high-placed council members were convinced that Citizen PierreAuguste Adet, the French representative to the American government, had already secretly visited Montreal in preparation for the eventual invasion.

It is possible that Mclane was associated with people who were planning an invasion, but it is also possible that he was just a braggart. In his memoirs published in Stanstead in 1826, Cushing went to great lengths to explain that he would not participate in any such scheme, and declared that he told Mclane so right up front. He records a long, chiding speech to Mclane, pointed enough to warn Mclane to get out of the colony if he really was an agent of an organized movement.

Cushing approached his acquaintance Stephen Sewell to tell him about Mclane, knowing that Sewell would take the story very seriously. Sewell’s older brother, Jonathan, the attorney-general, was also the chief prosecutor. While his legal work has been highly praised in most cases, and he is credited with reducing the incidence of capital punishment, in the case of Mclane he acted immediately and vigorously, not simply to get a conviction, but to make a public example of the accused traitor. Leading up to the trial in Quebec City in July 1797, the authorities were dealing with riots over a law that obliged the Canadiens to contribute their time, equipment and teams of horses toward the construction of roads. The Canadiens were also refusing to join militias for fear of being posted far from home. With these tensions, talk of spies and of imminent invasion, someone like Mclane, with no family or community to rally to his cause locally, was the perfect scapegoat. A conviction would allow the authorities to demonstrate what they could do if people did not fall into line.

William Barnard and John Black came forward as witnesses for the Crown. Barnard testified that he had met Mclane in Vermont, and later in Montreal, and that Mclane had admitted that he wanted to promote revolution in Canada. Black, a ship’s carpenter who was also a member of the House of Assembly, arranged for the authorities to arrest Mclane at Black’s house, and testified that Mclane had solicited him to join in a coup.

The trial started at 5 o’clock in the morning and was finished by 9 o’clock that evening. The jury took only half an hour to return with a verdict. The judgment sent a chill through society and was written up in the United States as an example of British cruelty and injustice, but the American government did not protest. No associated rebels were ever found.

Two novice lawyers were appointed to defend Mclane, who pleaded his innocence, and when he was found guilty of high treason, they peti- tioned the court to have the ruling overturned because he was not a citizen of the colony, and therefore could not be a traitor.

Osgoode rejected the petition, but in spite of Osgoode’s cruel judicial order, Mclane would die mercifully at the end of a rope three weeks after the judgment.

A list of Crown lands granted in the Eastern Townships shows that Black was awarded 53,000 acres in Dorset Township, Barnard, 40,200 acres in Brompton, and Cushing 58,692 acres in Shipton Township. Although he lost the American Coffee House to creditors, Cushing had proven his loyalty to the British Crown, but the story of David Mclane still haunted him as he wrote his memoirs decades later.