1839: Sibley's War
“The Manifest Rights of Protestant America”
In the 1830s the American Dominion, like Britain itself, is politically dominated by a coalition that is doveish towards France. In 1832 the eleven-year premiership of the brash Andrew Muhlenberg is succeeded by the more genteel, but equally doveish First Minister
Simeon Webster from Massachusetts. Webster was key to the Anglo-American economic pact as Treasury Minister in 1830 that guaranteed trade conditions across the Atlantic; in 1831 he was also instrumental in working with British Foreign Secretary Grosvenor in negotiating fishery access for New England on the Grand Banks. By that token he supports further thawing of relations with the administration in Quebec. British America, it seems, is on a firm path of rapprochement with its old adversaries beyond the mountains.
Still, not all American politicians are so conciliatory towards the French. In April 1838 Delegate
John Andrews rises in the Virginia House of Burgesses and delivers a remarkable address during a debate over reorganizing county governments in the province. Andrews represents Staunton in the legislature and is part of a growing movement known as the
Yeoman Democrats, which is formed out of the old Tory agrarian party. Of late, the Shenandoah Valley has become a hotbed of this sort of discontent due to a lack of new farming opportunities. Andrews harnesses these sentiments in his speech, known to history as the
“Manifest Rights of Protestant America” address. Andrews directly challenges the prevailing political winds by strongly advocating for expansionist policy, a position that’s been left mostly unspoken for over two decades.
Andrews uses charged religious language and nationalistic rhetoric to argue for Anglo-American expansion to the west. He points to eastern Quebec as evidence the French have “abdicated all responsibility to improve the land they so strenuously claim” by leaving the borderlands to “the untamed French Indians” who “obstruct improvements with their savage need to maintain virgin lands as simple game preserves.” He also attacks the dominant Métis communities in the southern Quebec provinces as “degraded men pulled down by savagery more than the savage is enlightened into a man.” Andrews levels typically acrid rhetoric at Catholicism, decrying that “productive and spirited Protestant men of the soil in Kentucky” are “bound and chained by unholy Papist inquests,” referring to the supposed plight of Huguenots and Anglo-American settlers in French Kentucky.
The speech is long and wide-ranging, hitting on the “manifest right and predestination” of Protestantism to spread free-thought, and its “inherent respect for the rights of man and self-reliance” contra Catholicism and that it is “past due” for Anglo-Americans to remember their tenacity and “reliance on divine Providence” to “supplant the French savages to the west.” Some lines veer dangerously close to sedition by excoriating British “abandonment” of the Dominion and their “assuredness to use us a warehouse and trading post for the benefit of destitute machinists toiling in the choked air of overcrowded factory floors in the mother country.”
Highly controversial, the speech leads to a number of Whig delegates from eastern Virginia demanding his expulsion from the chamber. But Andrews has given voice to a long-dormant attitude in the American Dominion, particularly in the border regions where the mountains rise and stand symbolizing “the pen that holds Americans back from their destiny.” His speech is amplified by the happenstance that John Andrews is the son-in-law of the new President-General of the Dominion
Henry Laurens, Lord Mepkin, recently appointed to Philadelphia by King George IV. Although Laurens is not a subscriber of Andrews’ politics–something he makes abundantly clear to the Congress and Parliament–the association enables the fiery speech to make far greater waves than if Andrews had been a typical backbencher in a provincial legislature.
The Dominion government is increasingly wary of these sorts of radical sentiments in American society, particularly with the recent outbreak of war on the European continent. In the Dominion the official government liaison to the British government is known as the Parliamentary Minister. By the 1830s the role has developed into a sort of ad hoc foreign secretary position, given that the Dominion is beholden to Whitehall’s foreign policy. In 1838 Webster’s Parliamentary Minister
Charles J. Adams, a fellow Boston man, expresses grave concerns with London that unrest in the Dominion’s backcountry could interfere with Britain’s stated neutrality in the European conflict. Grosvenor’s reply to these warnings is to remind Philadelphia that the Dominion government has full responsibility for its internal affairs and that they had best endeavor to prevent any commencement of hostilities with the Quebecois that would impact Britain’s foreign policy.
Sibley’s Virginia Army of Kentucky
As might be expected of John Andrews’ constituency, Augusta County Virginia is a cradle of the radical thinking expressed in his speech. Colonel
Charles Allen Sibley, an ex-Continental Army Captain & militia commander in Staunton forms the military arm of the Yeoman Democratic movement. Contrary to his friend in the Burgesses, Sibley has come to the conclusion that their sentiments will not sway the provincial legislature, let alone Congress or Parliament in adopting the cause and confronting the French Indians. Col. Sibley has already resolved by the late-spring of 1838 that he will embark on a treasonous endeavor that, if successful, will force Philadelphia’s hand and potentially bring even London along with them.
Sibley’s plan is similar to the logic of the
New Richmond Uprising during Talleyrand’s War: use Anglo-American settlers in French Kentucky
(Kentaké) to rise up and, hopefully, bring the Huguenots into it as well. Sibley believes this time such an effort can succeed due to a much increased Anglo-American presence in the region and increased resentment from the Huguenots towards the new King of France, who is seen as a Catholic ideologue. Indeed, the new Superintendent of southern Quebec,
Louis-Pierre de Montcalm Gozon–the grandson of the war hero Marquis–is a reactionary conservative who many fear has been put in place for the purposes of cracking down on the thriving Protestantism in the New Lyons region.
Sibley affirms these beliefs based on reports from his nephew
Elijah Hornsby, a settler and mayor of
Virginia’s Heart [OTL London, KY], the largest of several Anglo towns founded in southern Kentucky with Quebec’s sanction. Hornsby has spent the better part of a decade building a fifth column of Anglo-American radicals within French territory. Situated far from political power bases on the Ohio River, Hornsby’s Yeoman supporters report first hand the quality land in bountiful French Kentucky. With the insular Cherokee to the south and more established Huguenots and Anglos to the west, Hornsby views the biggest obstacle to seizing control of Kentucky to be the sparse military garrisons in the countryside and the chateaus belonging to Catholic gentry in the north. He reports as much to his uncle in Staunton using a sophisticated courier system back-and-forth from Kentucky to Virginia.
Aside from the uprising in Kentucky, Sibley himself plans to invade Shawnee territory
(Shauwanaké) from Virginia and seize French garrisons in the Appalachian mountain valleys. He quietly builds a trusted network of militia officers that will be ready to follow his commands when the time comes. Sibley is careful in his communications, wary of moderates getting wind of his plans and killing them in the cradle. Despite his secrecy, rumor reaches the Governor of Virginia,
James Lee Ringgold, who demands an investigation to find evidence of the conspiracy in July, 1838. Learning of his betrayal, Sibley accelerates his plans, resolving that confrontation in Virginia may be necessary to bring freedom to Kentucky.
On 13 July, Sibley speaks to over sixty militia officers secretly assembled at the farm of his friend Captain John Halliwell, telling the men that they represent the vanguard of a new Protestant-American nation, to be founded on the far-side of the mighty Appalachians. Sibley says they will no longer be officers in the Virginia Provincial Militia, but are the founders of a new
Virginia Army of Kentucky. They are to drill their loyal men under arms four times a week and gather supplies and ordinance as quietly as they’re able until word comes from Sibley to muster and march on their objectives. He sends a message that same night to his nephew in Virginia’s Heart that plans will be put into action before the end of the summer.
The danger of mounting such an ambitious plan in secret is that too many ears get wind of it. As his officers return to their militia units a number of loose-lips lead to information traveling back to Richmond. Governor Ringgold has the evidence he needs and issues arrest warrants for several confirmed participants in the Sibley conspiracy. Riders are dispatched to inform the Continental Army postings in the Shenandoah Valley in case local Sheriffs refuse to enforce the warrants, which is indeed what happens in early-August. When the warrants arrive in Staunton the Augusta County sheriff refuses to arrest Sibley and his allies. Sibley, mindful that time is short, orders his Virginia Army of Kentucky to muster out before Dominion forces arrive.
Yeomen versus Continentals
Major Archibald Bolling of the Continental Army rides north out of
Forts Fairfax and Dunmore [OTL Glasgow & Roanoke, VA] in the southern Shenandoah with three companies of dragoons determined to prevent Dominion law from being violated by Sibley’s illegal army. At Steeles Tavern on 9 August, Bolling encounters Sibley’s gathering of over 5,000 Yeomen. The Yeomen refuse to disperse as ordered, even when Thoroughgood fires his pistol in the air. The Major is astonished to see the organization and equipment of the Yeomen, being in possession of a number of field pieces and wagons of powder stores and munitions apparently seized from county arsenals. With fewer than 400 dragoons, Bolling sees that he’s outmatched and decides to avoid violence, allowing Sibley to pass. He splits his dragoons, with two companies riding back to Fort Fairfax ahead of the Yeomen, while he rides to Richmond to spread word of the “rebellion in Shenandoah.”
Sibley’s army moves southward through the Shenandoah Valley, ultimately with the goal of reaching
Fort Paluelle [OTL Bellepoint, WV], which guards the west side of the mountains at the junction of the Kanawha and Bruyère
[OTL Greenbriar River] rivers nearly 120 km away. Sibley’s first task though is to get past the pair of Continental Army forts that stand in his path. Fortunately for the Yeomen, the garrison at Fort Fairfax is an example of the unreadiness of the standing Continental Army. One Yeoman writes that “drunkards and layabouts command the fort at Fairfax,” and that “on average these allegedly professional soldiers would not be welcome in the ranks of the Yeoman Army.” The Yeomen march past Fort Fairfax with little difficulty, with the Continentals unwilling to fire upon their countrymen.
Meanwhile, the Continental dragoons continue riding south to hopefully set up a roadblock at Fort Dunmore. Unfortunately for the Continentals, Fort Dunmore is in an even sorrier state than Fort Fairfax. Once again, when Sibley marches through the town of Dunmore the Continentals are unable to stop them. Indeed, the Yeomen receive plaudits from many townspeople and soldiers in Dunmore. One Continental Sergeant, evidently drunk, fires a shot at the Yeomen as they march, but he’s quickly subdued by his own men. Nearly a company’s worth of Continentals abandon their posts and actually join them, along with several dozen other men from the town. With the final Dominion fort cleared, Sibley’s forces head west into the mountains and towards Fort Paluelle.
In Philadelphia, First Minister Webster and President-General Laurens learn of the unrest in the Shenandoah through the disconnected network of telegraph lines and couriers on 13 August. Over the next week more reports come in, including the sorry state of Continental forces in the west and the desertion of Dominion men at Dunmore. Alarm spreads throughout the Dominion government; how can their military be so unprepared that they cannot put down a rebellious militia? Eastern forces are mobilized in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia to move to the Shenandoah, but they will be weeks behind the Yeomen. Laurens issues a dispatch on a fast packet to London while Webster and his government urgently discuss what, if anything, should be told to the French administrators in Quebec.
Kentucky Yeomen Rising
As Sibley’s Yeoman get underway in Virginia, Elijah Hornsby’s Yeomen in French Kentucky launch their own offensive, predetermined by courier before Dominion politics forced Sibley’s hand. On 17 August over 800 militiamen from Anglo-American towns across southern Kentucky move against
Fort Polignac [~OTL Corbin, KY ], which has stood watch over the region for decades. Garrisoned by a mere two companies of French colonial troops, Polignac is isolated and not expecting any organized attack from the countryside. Captain Armand Eustache d’Aoust holds command of the fort and he is surprised to see the assemblage of militia approach his posting.
The relationship between Anglo-American settlers and French garrison towns is mutually frosty, but there had been little indication of this sort of rebellion brewing. Aoust sends riders to Fort Berthier to the south and to inform the Cherokee (Chaulakie) at
Telliquois. Captain d’Aoust leaves the fort to parley with the Mayor Hornsby, who informs him that Fort Polignac now stands in the sovereign democratic state of Kentucky and that the garrison can surrender and leave or fight and die. Aoust opts to abandon the fort. The Yeoman confiscate their weapons and escort them north out of Yeoman territory where they are left to march alone towards the city of Montcalm. On 24 August,
Fort Berthier [~OTL Middlesboro, KY] likewise falls to the Yeoman, but this time they are unable to capture the whole garrison, most of whom escape south to the Cherokee towns.
While Hornsby’s men repurpose forts Polignac and Berthier (re-christened as Fort Sibley and Fort Hornsby), other Yeoman Democrats seek to spread the uprising to the heart of Protestant territory in New France, the axis of settlements to the northwest between New Lyons and New Richmond. Alderman
Richard Grime is Hornsby’s strongest ally in New Richmond and strenuously whips discontent in the community against the French administration and the Catholic Church. Grimes is joined by several leading Huguenot vintners in the region, who attempt to sway French Protestants to the cause.
The whole Yeoman cause hinges upon creating a mass uprising among the long-established settlements in Kentucky. But as happened two decades earlier, the more entrenched Prostestant communities are more conservative. Fellow Alderman in New Richmond
Lawrence McClurg–son of the previous uprising’s leader–is a staunch opponent of “conspiracy and rash action.” His brother-in-law, Antoine Argent is the son of the Mayor of New Lyons and together they have helped to build close ties between the French and Anglo population centers of Kentucky. Their moderating influence overpowers Grimes’ radical sentiments, leading to a number of tense confrontations between Yeoman sympathizers and the rest of the community.
On 23 August
Guillaume Vizard, an adjutant to Superintendent Montcalm-Gozon, arrives in New Richmond. He tours the town and meets with the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen. Vizard informs them that recent unrest among “the wild bands” of breakaway Peoria people requires an increased military presence on the lower Ohio River, including a localized garrison to be based in the nearby village of Leflanc. Richard Grime, though cordial in the meeting, calls people together at the First Presbyterian meeting house after the departure of Vizard. He uses inflammatory rhetoric to describe the motives of the French administrators in the upriver city of Montcalm and warns that “Catholic soldiers will soon be making their homes alongside your own; erecting their own houses of papistry; corrupting the goodness and godliness of our streets, our schoolhouses, and our government!” He accuses Vizard of a Papist plot to “bring ruin to our towns,” branding the excuse of roving natives as “political sophistry,” a charge which is not a wholly inaccurate.
By the late evening a mob of several hundred forms in New Richmond’s town square. Alderman McClurg and Mayor
Edward Ungle address the crowd and attempt to contextualize Vizard’s visit, pointing out the reports of rebellious natives being driven out of Illinois and reminding them that there have long been Catholics living among them. Grimes responds that the Quebec administrators “run the savages here with the very purpose of the fortification and destruction of our free towns.” Still Ungle and McClurg push back, joined by several other local prominents including Argent and the town’s militia commander, Colonel Nathaniel Birch. Birch admonishes the mob to return to their homes, that their concerns are noted and valid, but that rashness can lead to nothing positive. McClurg reminds them of his father’s foibles with rebellion and that they have worked hard to make this land their home. To risk everything by drawing the ire of Montcalm is foolhardy. As the crowd begins to gradually disperse, Grimes vows to his counterparts in town leadership that he will not cease his efforts nor will he “allow our people to lie on the ground like snakes rather than protect their liberties.”
Despite the late-August confrontation in New Richmond and several others like it, men like Grimes are unable to inspire the sort of insurrection that Hornsby and Sibley need to stage a revolution against the Quebecois in Kentucky. While settlements closer to the Ohio River refuse to engage, southern Kentucky continues to fan the flames. Hornsby can count more than thirty towns and many more farms under the control of the Yeoman. On 30 August, Hornsby hosts the
Kentucky Convention behind the palisades of Fort Sibley. In his opening remarks to the men before him, including the recently arrived Colonel Sibley himself, Hornsby says the convention’s goal is to declare independence from Quebec and build a government of self-reliant yeomen citizens.
Quebec Strikes Back
By the second week of September though threats begin to emerge to the nascent revolutionary movement. Quebecois soldiers under Captain Alexandre Berthier and a large force of Cherokee
[Chaulakie] militia under
Têtedefeu, or Firehead, move against the Yeoman from the south. They near Fort Hornsby by 12 September and this time it’s the detachment of Yeomen who retreat in the face of a larger force. They arrive back at Fort Sibley warning of the Cherokee advance. The Cherokee hold a strong place in the minds of the Anglo-Americans, whose ancestors drove them out of North Carolina and Georgia. In the intervening years the Cherokee have grown into a powerful nation within southern Quebec, who are frequently used as a specter of fear in the southern Dominion. Particular animosity is felt due to the Cherokee welcoming black Americans fleeing slavery and then prejudice, with hundreds adopted into their communities. News of the “black Indians” becoming involved in their uprising is unwelcome and more Kentucky militia are rushed to Fort Sibley as reinforcements.
To the north, Captain d’Aoust’s report of the uprising reaches the authorities in Montcalm by 25 August. The Superintendent, seated in the very city named after his grandfather, puts out a call throughout much of Sud du Lac for militia to support the regular troops in suppressing the revolt in Kentucky. Montcalm-Gozon writes to Governor-General
d’Iberville, who receives his letter just after getting a warning from Philadelphia of a potential incursion by Virginia rebels into Kentucky. Iberville dispatches orders to Montcalm supporting the intervention and warning of further incursions from the British Dominion. By 14 September, Montcalm-Gozon has a 10,000 man force of militia along with 2500 men from Montcalm’s garrisons. The Quebecois forces move out of Montcalm on the 16th after Mass, moving south to the so-called State of Kentucky.
Meanwhile, Sibley’s Virginia Army of Kentucky reaches Fort Paluelle on 14 August, taking Captain Gustav-Louis Lannes by surprise. Initially believing he is facing an actual invasion by the British Dominion, he puts all his resources into the fort’s defense, raining artillery down on Sibley’s men, scattering their formations. Not expecting the warm welcome, Sibley restructures his plans and sends a messenger to the fort with a letter identifying his forces and outlining his goals. Angered but bemused by the Virginian’s delusions of grandeur, Lannes decides not to fight to the last against the unsanctioned “Kentucky Army” and allows himself to be taken hostage in exchange for an allowance for his men to retreat to friendly ground. Sibley agrees to the terms and has the Quebecois soldiers’ weapons confiscated. A company of Yeomen are left behind at Paluelle, which Sibley rebrands as Fort Boone, and he continues onward with the bulk of his army and Lannes as his guest. The Yeomen face only minor harassment from Shawnee hunters on their march to Kentucky as they move deeper in Quebec territory.
They reach Fort Sibley on 28 August just as Hornsby is preparing to open the Kentucky Convention. The Virginia Army of Kentucky parades through the neighboring town, now occupied by cheering Anglo-Americans rather than dour French Catholics. Sibley is hailed a hero and offered the President’s Chair at the Convention. Sibley declines, opting to take command of the local militia forces and drill them into preparedness while his Virginians rest from their long 320 km march. When news of the Cherokee’s intervention arrives on 14 September the community at Fort Sibley becomes tense. Some question whether the Convention should be moved from Fort Sibley to the north in Virginia’s Heart, but word arrives that Montcalm’s forces are marching on them from the north. It’s determined that Fort Sibley is where the Yeoman will make their stand.
Riders are sent out to friendly towns seeking reinforcement from any militia not already committed, one of whom rides to New Richmond. Upon his arrival the rider is told by Mayor Ungle that the militia have already gone, but not to the aid of the Yeomen; the New Richmond militia have departed for Montcalm under summons from the Superintendent. When word arrives back at Fort Sibley that the Protestant men of New Richmond and New Lyons are marching against them with the Quebecois, a sense of despair falls over the Yeomen. Sibley is able to rally them to defend their infant state and the local militias make haste for Virginia’s Heart to protect their homes and harass Montcalm-Gozon’s forces as they march.
The Virginia Army of Kentucky camps at Fort Sibley, waiting on news of the Cherokee force expected to be shortly approaching. When a pair of scouts fail to return on 19 September, Sibley’s men muster for battle, but no enemies appear. On the 20th three more riders disappear; two more on the 21st; four on the 22nd. That day the four horses return to the fort without riders, with one having a bundle of uniforms strapped to the saddle. This psychological warfare from the Cherokee continues on the night of the 23rd when the Yeomen hear whooping from the forest. A squad of soldiers is sent to investigate campfire smoke rising over the trees but return reporting an empty campsite. The next night the whooping continues, but this time six sentries are killed by marksmen from positions among the trees. Finally on 25 September Sibley is inspecting fortifications with his aide-de-camp when the man is sniped while walking next to him. The marksman is spotted and a pursuit is mounted by a pair of platoons but rounds of shots echo around Fort Sibley and only five men stumble back to camp, several bloodied.
Several hours pass and a lone Frenchman appears on horseback holding a standard. He is granted a parley with Colonel Sibley and is revealed to be an adjutant to Captain Berthier. He tells Sibley that the Cherokee’s “cruel warfare” will cease if Fort Sibley is abandoned and all Yeomen leave Cherokee land. Sibley is loath to cave in to the natives, especially when he’s lacking basic intelligence about his opponents; unfortunately the French officer is unhelpful in that regard. Sibley decides to make a stand and sends several companies out to patrol the surrounding forests. Which ones returned the most bloodied informed the focus on the next patrol. For several days the Yeomen patrols encounter nests of marksmen and a pair of abandoned camps, but each time the Cherokee manage to slip away. On 1 October, a company of Yeomen encounters what seems to be an abandoned camp, but are then fallen upon by hundreds of Cherokee fighters. Known as the
Cabbage Valley Massacre, between 85 and 100 Yeomen are killed by the Cherokee. While the bodies are not mutilated as the Yeoman would later claim, they are stripped of all clothing and possessions as trophies of war.
While Sibley’s forces deal with the irregular fighting against the Cherokee, the local Yeoman Army are prepared to make a stand against the Quebecois at Virginia’s Heart. They make a plan to draw the Quebecois into chasing a retreating column into territory where the road is lined with cover for irregular warfare. They make a stand on 27 September at the village of Rockcastle, which hosts a bridge across a creek of the same name. Yeoman block the road as Montcalm’s vanguard companies enter the down and refuse to disperse when so ordered, causing the brief
Battle of Rockcastle. After several volleys are exchanged, the Yeoman retreat across the bridge, pursued by the Quebecois who face riflemen as they cross. Yeoman irregulars are most effective in the forested, hilly terrain just south of Rockcastle, forcing temporary pauses and breaks in the Quebec advance, but once the land opens up the Quebecois make skillful use of flankers, many of them Shawnee with rifles and bladed weapons, to neuter the impact of the Yeoman irregulars. While Quebecois losses are not insignificant, their progress towards Virginia's Heart is not impeded and the Yeomen are forced to make a final stand in the town.
Colonel Birch of New Richmond is sent by Montcalm to discuss a surrender but he is not received, with the Yeomen firing at his horse’s feet when he attempts to approach. Birch is heard to yell, “you damned rebels will mean ruin for all of us,” as he rides back toward Quebecois lines. The
Battle of Virginia’s Heart on 3 October marks the end of the homegrown Kentucky Yeoman Army. Quebecois artillery breaks the rebels’ formations in less than half-an-hour and the town is occupied an hour later. Thousands of muskets and rifles are confiscated as are the stores of powder. Most of the surviving Yeoman militia are captured and kept in camps under guard, where they are eventually allowed to depart for their homes under oath to never again take up arms against the Crown of France.
Several companies worth of men escape Virginia’s Heart and reach Fort Sibley, where the Virginia Army of Kentucky is still carrying on its slow-motion battle against the Cherokee. The men from Virginia’s Heart bring the grave news. The Kentucky Convention, led by Hornsby, decides to release their work and spread word far-and-wide in the hopes that Philadelphia or London may intervene on their behalf. The Kentucky Declaration announces the severing of “Protestant Kentucky” from “Papist Quebec,” boldly and falsely counting New Richmond and New Lyons among their peers. Over all the other eloquent verbiage in the document, this inclusion makes the document a laughing-stock from New Lyons to Philadelphia in the late-fall of 1838. Dominion President-General Laurens remarks that “these frontiersmen think themselves the army of Spartacus, when they are more Marc Antony’s.” Superintendent Montcalm-Gozon is content to consolidate control of central Kentucky, saying, “let these curs in their castle continue to bleed with the southern savages, they will not last the winter.”
Conclusion and Aftermath
Indeed as the weeks of skirmishing with the Cherokee continues, Yeomen begin to desert with increasing frequency, especially as cold weather closes in on the region. Sibley is increasingly frustrated by both his army and the so-called Kentucky Special Assembly, so-created by the Convention and headed by his nephew Hornsby. Sibley writes that “this alleged government is as real and effectual as a young girl who is the lady of a dollhouse.” The two men are heard having angry rows as winter closes in, but Sibley never abandons his namesake fort, even as hundreds of his men take their leave, preferring the hospitality of the Quebecois over endless skirmishing with the Cherokee.
For their part, the Cherokee and the French company that accompanied them move to Fort Berthier for the winter, launching only periodic raids against Fort Sibley as the cold takes hold. Têtedefeu returns to Telliquois as a war hero for the Cherokee, who see Sibley’s War as a vengeance against the Anglo-Americans who fought so brutally against them for generations. For the relatively isolated Cherokee, their participation in the fighting leads to deeper connections with the Quebecois, rather than their traditional partnerships with French outposts in Louisiana to the southwest. For the Cherokee, Sibley’s War begins a long trend of integration and participation into Quebecois society.
For the Protestants of the Ohio in New Richmond and New Lyons, their loyalty to Quebec pays off with few recriminations from Montcalm, other than the increased administrative presence in the area leading to a slightly more heterogeneous character in the old Huguenot towns. The Yeoman Democrat faction led by Alderman Grimes is well-discredited and the movement is forced to moderate heavily, with many of the most radical voices like Grimes leaving the region entirely.
By late-winter 1839 it’s clear even to the radical members of the Kentucky Special Assembly that their dreams for a self-reliant, Protestant yeoman state in Kentucky will not come to pass. While several of the most strident militia commanders lead a small group of men into the countryside to mount an irregular campaign against the Quebecois, Sibley and Hornsby decamp for Virginia’s Heart on 5 March. They are both placed under arrest and eventually Sibley and the Virginian’s under his command are marched back to the Dominion where they will face justice. Despite negotiations to avoid it, Hornsby and the other leaders of Kentucky settlers are to be kept in Quebec to be tried for treason against the French Crown. Ultimately only Hornsby and two other men are hanged, while two dozen more are deported to the Dominion. Most of the insurrectionists are allowed to return to their towns and farms upon making an oath on pain of death to the Crown. The few who refuse are required to leave Quebec, but most take the offer. Thus Sibley’s War comes to an end with a relative whimper and not the grand revolution envisioned by its proponents.
In the Dominion, the insurrection inspires a round of reforms to the Continental Army, which had so spectacularly failed to prevent it. First Minister Webster also pushes through legislation for a robust Interior Ministry at the Dominion level that will have its own marshals to execute warrants issued in Dominion courts. President-General Laurens, while embarrassed through his association with John Andrews, receives much credit from London for maintaining the peace between the British Dominion and French Quebec through the whole affair. Andrews is forced to resign his post in the Burgesses and Sibley is hanged for treason in June, 1839. While Yeoman Democracy continues to be popular in the west, explicit expansionism fades as a major platform; indeed the radical expansionists Yeoman Democrats now see the Dominion as too weak to accomplish their mission of expansion. Enterprising minds who believe in the concept of “manifest destiny” for American Protestants to expand their culture and society begin to seek new destinations to put their ideology into practice.
