Why did the US revolt when other colonies like Canada did not?

by Libran

My understanding is that the colonies that became the US had a highly favored status amongst the crown colonies of the British empire. I'm just wondering whether there was differentiation between how the 13 colonies and the Canadian colonies were treated, and if so what made the US colonies different from the other British colonies. Was it just that the US colonies had the most favorable position in terms of natural resources and population growth, and they simply grew too big to tolerate the yoke of colonialism? Or was it more that these were the favored colonies, and their regular interaction with British society led to a feeling that they deserved better than to be treated as mere colonies? Or was it for other reasons entirely?

lord_mayor_of_reddit

Why did the US revolt when other colonies like Canada did not?

You may be interested in this previous answer of mine which provides answers province by province about why the Canadians did not join the Thirteen Colonies. This is actually quite a popular question in this sub and there are some shorter answers in the FAQ. You may also want to do further reading here which has links to various answers compiler by /u/Master_Gunner, as well as here where u/idrymalogist provides further information.

Briefly, with Parliament's passage of the Quebec Act, Quebec had won concessions on all the major issues they had had with Great Britain, so joining a revolution that might be unsuccessful would jeopardize their position. Further, the U.S. had a very strong anti-Catholic bias at the time, so there was no guarantee they'd achieve the same concessions as part of a revolt. There was more political security in sticking with Britain.

In Nova Scotia, British settlers had only come there since 1754 at the earliest, having claimed free land from the British government who were trying to secure their hold after the French and Indian War. There were Patriots there, but after they lost a single battle there, most Patriots fled, and Halifax became a major British Naval hub for the duration of the war.

All the other Canadian colonies were too small to really be a factor.

But your question is kind of the reverse: why did the U.S. colonies revolt? For an answer to that, you may be interested in this previous post of mine which gives the details.

Briefly, the Intolerable Acts pushed the Thirteen Colonies over the edge. The Declaration of Independence contains a series of "grievances" against the crown, and that list of reasons isn't an effort to obfuscate the truth. Each colony had slightly different issues that had strained their relationship with Parliament, but they weren't particularly too egregious that they couldn't be overcome peacefully.

But the Intolerable Acts were more than the Whig/Patriot faction in the Thirteen Colonies could take. As falloiut from the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had dissolved the government of Massachusetts, closed the port of Boston cutting off the colony's economy, and put the colony under martial law with soldiers patrolling the streets of Boston. And Bostonites were forced to house and feed these soldiers in their own homes. If Parliament could do that to Massachusetts, they could do it to the rest -- their constitutional guarantees were entirely beholden to the discretion of Parliament, so they weren't very guaranteed at all, as proven by the Intolerable Acts. The other twelve colonies joined in Massachusetts' revolt. They tried to resolve it peacefully, it didn't work, and they declared independence.

I'm just wondering whether there was differentiation between how the 13 colonies and the Canadian colonies were treated, and if so what made the US colonies different from the other British colonies. Was it just that the US colonies had the most favorable position in terms of natural resources and population growth, and they simply grew too big to tolerate the yoke of colonialism? Or was it more that these were the favored colonies, and their regular interaction with British society led to a feeling that they deserved better than to be treated as mere colonies? Or was it for other reasons entirely?

Each North American colony was treated differently by Parliament from the rest, though, again, that wasn't particularly what caused the Revolution (see above, and the links above to the more thorough, previous answers).

One last thing that one of those previous answers of mine touches upon: there actually were rebellions in Canada, though they happened much later, in 1837-38. The specific issues involved weren't identical to the grievances laid out by the Americans in the Declaration of Independence, but, nevertheless, they similarly boiled down to Parliament's interference with local governance. The rebels (known as the "Reformers") in Canada even had their own declaration of independence and everything.

While these rebellions were put down rather quickly, the issues raised were not. Several of the leaders were executed, but some--notably, William Lyon MacKenzie--escaped to the United States, where they lived for many years as political refugees. Parliament commissioned a study to find out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, called Lord Dunmore's Report. The report basically said that the Reformers had legitimate cause for concern on a whole host of issues, and policy needed to be changed, with more home-rule granted to the Canadians.

And that's what happened. When the Tory government was ousted in elections in 1848 and the loyal Reformers gained the majority, the charges against MacKenzie were dropped. He was allowed to return to Canada, he ran for his old seat in the Legislative Assembly (Ontario's version of parliament), and won. There's now a statute of him in Toronto outside the Legislative Assembly building.

But even so, the reforms weren't quite enough to stem the tide of the self-rule movement in Canada. While the specifics are a bit too long to go into in this post, suffice it to say, one of the eventual results of the rebellions was that the Parliament buildings in Montreal were set on fire in 1849, over a law that (in their view) insufficiently compensated Canadians for private property destroyed by the armed forces during the rebellion the previous decade. This is seen as an important event that ultimately led to the Confederation of Canada in 1867, which granted Canada even more self-rule. Because of the passage of the Constitution Act on July 1 of that year, Canadians celebrate that day as their independence day ("Canada Day").

TL;DR: The U.S. revolted over the Intolerable Acts. Canada revolted too, but it was later, after their own conflicts with Parliament.