The Infernals

As a 2,000-pound cracked copper bell, hung high in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House, announced the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence on a summer’s day in 1776, a battered army, “driven to the sad necessity of abandoning Canada,” trudged south toward Lake Champlain. Its retreat did not bode well for a nation a mere four days old.

Just over a year earlier, alarmed by the prospect of an invading force, Sir Guy Carleton, the governor of Quebec, had declared martial law. His counterpart in Nova Scotia, Francis Legge, soon did the same. Expeditions led by the likes of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold were coming to seize “the door of Canada,” with hopes of inviting both English and French Canadians to join a nascent revolution. The plan was not unlike breaking into a house only to ask its owner to join in the next caper. However brazen, it worked for a time, at least among habitants who were disenchanted with British rule and the seigneuries...