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.

The Abrupt Reversal of British Policy toward Lower Canada Causes a Non-Importation Campaign Against British Goods

A final factor was needed to turn Mackenzie's thoughts in the direction of armed uprising, and that was the abrupt reversal of British policy toward Lower Canada. Following the failure of Lord Gosford's mission of conciliation, Lord John Russell announced a return to firmness in his Ten Resolutions of March 2, 1837. These Resolutions rejected the demands of the Papineau party and allowed the governor to take funds from the provincial treasury that the Assembly had refused to vote.... The passage of the Ten Resolutions brought Mackenzie to new heights of furious indignation.... He was soon in correspondence with Wolfred Nelson, perhaps the most militant radical leader in the lower province, and he was soon preaching the doctrine of non-importation. "Buy, wear, and use as little as you possibly can of British manufactured goods or British West India merchandize or liquors." Mackenzie now agreed with his Lower Canadian friends that a bold attack must be made against British authority, not simply against the local oligarchy.

--Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013), 244.

Jacksonian Influences on the Upper Canada Rebellion

But after an extensive trip in the United States during the first year of Andrew Jackson's administration, his outlook perceptibly changed. Here was democracy at work, and he liked it. In particular, he was enthusiastic about the Jacksonian practice of rotation in office (a polite term for the spoils system). What a wonderful way to get rid of the impudent "puppies and underlings of office" who so abounded in Upper Canada! Presently he was serializing the biography of his new hero, Andrew Jackson, in the pages of the Colonial Advocate.... he was more convinced than ever of the feasibility of a "federative union" of the British North American colonies that would do away with "slavish dependence" on England, and he now regarded it as proved that "the representative system of government" worked, and worked well.

--Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013), 211.

A Declaration of Independence Is Issued at Toronto to Imitate the 1776 American Declaration of Independence

He began to reprint Tom Paine's Common Sense, which had sparked the movement for independence in 1776. At the same time he set forth in great detail a scheme for local reform organizations, some features of which had distinct military overtones. One of his subscribers reported finding a note from Mackenzie folded in his paper, asking him to accompany the editor to Lower Canada "to assist the french" and then return and conquer the upper province. At the end of July he met with a group of radicals in Doel's brewery in Toronto to adopt a Declaration closely modelled on the famous document proclaimed at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. It ended by asking the reformers of Upper Canada to make common cause with Papineau and his colleagues, to organize political associations and public meetings, and to select a convention of delegates to meet at Toronto "as a Congress, to seek an effectual remedy for the grievances of the colonists." A Committee of Vigilance was named, with Mackenzie as agent and corresponding secretary.

--Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013), 244-245.