On this day 250 years ago in Boston, General Thomas Gage boarded a ship and departed the city. With his departure, General William Howe assumed command of the British Army in North America.

Sources: Ketchum, Richard M., Decisive Day: The Battle of Bunker Hill, New York: Owl Books, 1999 at p. 213; https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/william-howe

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress wrote to General Philip Schuyler, who they presumed to be in command of the invasion of Canada. Schuyler had returned to Fort Ticonderoga from the siege of Fort St. Jean in Canada in order to recuperate from illness, but remained in command of the New York Department. Hancock directed that:

the Canadians be induced to accede to an Union with these Colonies, and that they form from their several Parishes a Provincial Convention and send Delegates to this Congress. . . .

You may assure them that we shall hold their Rights as dear as our own, and on their Union with us, exert our utmost Endeavors to obtain for them and their Posterity the Blessings of a free Government, and that Security to their Persons and Property which is derived from the British Constitution. And you may further declare that we hold sacred the Rights of Conscience, and shall never molest them in the free Enjoyment of their Religion.

Source: https://americanfounding.org/entries/second-continental-congress-october-11-1775/