Upper Canada Should Become a State in the American Union

Reformers were asked to be "more Canadian" in their "habits and feelings," to throw away their "lip-loyal feelings and sayings of other countries," and to "substitute the word patriotic for the word loyalty." "Foreign" colonial ministers and "foreign" governors were vigorously denounced, while at the same time the advantages of membership in the American Union were set forth in attractive terms. As a state in the Union, the people of Upper Canada would enjoy complete local self-government, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot. Mackenzie's nationalism was now a North American nationalism. With the same grievances that the old thirteen colonies had suffered from, the Canadian people had the same right to rebel; their logical haven after successful rebellion was in the Union that had emerged from the earlier Revolution.

--Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013), 245-246.